Dear Jane Quilt - Draw 32 - D8, G8, K11, K13 - featuring the Butterfly Quilt



Wash Day - Butterfly Quilt

Despite the predicted rain, this Bank Holiday weekend has turned out quite pleasant.  An ideal day to get a large quilt washed and dried.  This is my Butterfly Quilt.  This is the first epic quilt I ever hand stitched and hand quilted and is the quilt which is on the bed for most of the winter.  The details can be found in one of my early posts.

Dear Jane Quilt - Draw 31 - Border Triangles LR6, LR8, RR6, RR8

It is Slow Stitching Sunday over at Kathy's Quilts.  I am still working on the Nearly Insane quilt on my long arm machine.  If 'slow' means not going fast enough, then yes, I am doing slow stitching. Like Kathy I have a chart marking off my progress and I am enjoying crossing each square off.

So this post is a bit of past, present and future.  An old quit, one approaching a finish once quilted and the ongoing development of the Dear Jane blocks which will one day be a completed quilt.  Draw 32 is back to square Dear Jane blocks, but we are sticking with Yellow.

Draw 32
D8 - Dee Dee's Delight
G8 - Justin's Comet
K11 - Columbine
K13 - Brandon's Star

This draw will be in Yellow
 

Nearly Insane Quilt - Block 1

Block 1 of the Nearly Insane quilt came with a  difficult decision - what could I find small enough to illustrate to you how small some of the pieces in this block are?  In the end I have opted for rice (Basmati rice, rather than Long Grain, if you were wondering).  Yes, I think the insanity has started.  In the end it was not so much that the paper was small, but that the fabric I was covering it with, was at least three times as big.

Little Pieces and Rice  - Block 1 Nearly Insane

As I started to construct it, I had aimed to take a picture of the pieces laid out before they were sewn together, but with the pieces so small I was distracted by getting them sewn together lest they blew away ...  only once I had started did I remember to take the picture.  I started in the middle and worked my way outwards, trying to contain the size of each stage to keep the block at 6 inches. 


Block 1 Construction - Nearly Insane Quilt

As you can see, I had that 'bendy' problem again, which I dealt with in Block 41.  I used the same technique to get it together. On this occaision I have removed the papers from a few of the inner squares, just to get the centre together. Not only are the pieces little, but the fabric is also on the bias, so it does have a bit of a life of its own, but I have reigned it in with the full force of my steam iron, relying on the rigidity of the papers of the larger outer pieces to keep the shape.  

Block 1 Centre Pieces - Nearly Insane Quilt

Once the centre square was together, it came together quite easily.

Block 1 - Nearly Insane Quilt

I guess this is a fairly traditional block, and with the red and cream fabric choices I have made, I am quite pleased with it.  I believe those four tiny little triangles are just a taster of what is to come ....
And as it is Friday, we are joining up with Crazy Mom Quilts,and here is a gratuitous picture of a Suzi on the Butterfly Quilt, for Feline Friday.


Suzi the Cat on the Butterfly Quilt

NUMBER OF PIECES: 37
DIFFICULTY: 5/10
SMALLEST PIECE: Triangle, 5/16" (8mm) x 5/16" (8mm) x 1/2" (13mm)
LARGEST PIECE: Triangle, 2 1/8" (54mm) x 2 1/8" (54mm) x 3" (76mm)TECHNIQUE: English Paper Piecing (EPP)
FABRICS:
"Lazy Daisy Red" by "Mama Said Sew" Collection by Sweetwater for Moda (M 5494 21)
"Prairie Paisley II" by Minick and Simpson for Moda (14739 21)
"Christmas Past" (14547) by Polly Minick and Lauri Simpson for Moda
Red and White Floral (Unidentified, purchased from The Shuttle)
 

Virtual Sewing Progress

This week I have spent more time thinking about sewing than actual doing any.  I have been working all day, as well as evenings this week, and sewing just has not had a look in. My journeys to work in the car have been spent dreaming of projects I want to do, of fabric I would need to buy for them, and lamenting the lack of time I have had in my sewing room.  Since Suzi became an 'internet sensation' by winning the Feline Friday giveaway at the Sarah Did It Blog, she has behaved like a winner of X Factor, but even she is missing the special time we share in the sewing room.

When life gets too hectic for sewing, there are places on the internet that I always seem to head off to for an instant fix.  The Fat Quarter Shop, to review their What's New section, to Green Fairy Quilts, to marvel at the incredible long arm quilting skills of Judi Madsen, and the list of bloggers that I follow.  Are there places that you head to for some virtual sewing?
 
Thank heavens for Blogland.
 
1. I have been posting my blog for just a little over two months, and this week I reached 21 Followers.  This means that Damsel Creations, the kind-hearted blogger who was the first Fabadashery Follower, has been moved to a second page. Just to say thank you for leading the way - you are not forgotten!

2. This week a blogger, Zipje and Zopje from the Netherlands, got in touch to regarding my Butterfly Quilt, as her sewing bee group are just about to start the same quilt.  Do visit to watch their progress.  It is a great quilt to make.

3. Sarah at Sarah Did It has been posting the progress of a lovely hand pieced Hexagon project, and kindly suggested a 'Mini Hexi Puzzle' for those of us who were jealous in need of a quick fix of hexies. By Thursday night I had cut out the papers ... 

4. Finally, too much time spent on the Internet has introduced me to projects that I never knew I needed to do, and they are posted here on my Pinterest page.  The one that has been dominating my mind is the 'Nearly Insane', Salinda Rupp quilt, published in a book by Liz Lois.  I am pretty much sure that this is the next major hand piecing project I am doing, confirmed that I ordered the book from the USA over a week ago - it arrived this morning.

 



#4 Butterfly Quilt - What did I learn from this Quilt?

Each quilt I make, I tend to learn something new.  With the Butterflies Quilt being my first large project, over a long period of time, it was perhaps my steepest learning curve with regard to patchwork and quilting.  Looking back, I realise how naïve I was, and how this project really opened the doors to the quilting world for me.


Butterfly Quilt on the Bed

English Paper Piecing is Great!
As long as the paper is cut to the right size, you can get away with rough cutting fabric, and along with hand sewing , you have much greater control of what is going on with your quilt - this is why I love working with the English Paper Piecing method. Also, cutting out the paper for quilts reminds me of cutting out dresses for paper dolls when I was a child.  I used to love this.  It is a quiet, peaceful pastime.  Sometimes I like to be on the machine, but when you have no choice in order to get a project done, it can feel like you are chained to it, and you really have to find a block of time to get the job done - not easy when you work full-time.  In the two years it took to complete the Butterflies quilt, I never once got frustrated with it.  It is portable.  You can fit it in to small gaps of time.  Just make sure you have it with you all the time!

Go With the Scraps
For this quilt project, the only fabric I bought was the cream calico and the fabric for the butterfly bodies.  Otherwise, I kept to what scrap fabric I had.  This led to, what felt like, some heavily compromised colour combinations, which made me wince as I sewed them together.  However, once the quilt was together, it looked perfect.  Go with the scraps, in general, they know what they are doing.

Thread
I used an off-white cotton to sew my pieces together, which worked for the majority of the quilt, but not so well on the coloured fabric.  As it travelled around with me  A LOT, just having to worry about one reel of thread, made it easier, however, with the quilts I have done since I have taken more care to match the thread to the fabric.

Quilting
This quilt needs more quilting.  I look at it every day and think this, but part of me is happy to keep it as it is, as a reminder that there is a ‘tipping point’ of too little, or too much quilting on a quilt.  I am still working on the balance of this.

#3 Butterfly Quilt - Showing the Butterfly Quilt

#2 Butterfly Quilt - Techniques and Construction

#1 Butterfly Quilt - Inspiration Behind the Quilt

#3 Butterfly Quilt - Showing the Butterfly Quilt

It was great to eventually see my Butterflies Quilt hung up at the NEC Festival of Quilts in Birmingham.  It was also lovely to hear the kind comments that visitors made about my work.  Because of its size, I had previously had nowhere to display it where I could stand back and have a good look at it myself.  This was a great opportunity.  At the time, I lived in a three storey house, and the only place large enough to lie it out was in the garden, and then to run upstairs and look at it out of the top window.  Not entirely satisfactory.


'Butterflies on the Move' Quilts UK 2007

This was the first quilt I entered into a show. The NEC Festival of Quilts is the biggest show in the UK, has a vast array of styles, and the quilts are well displayed (not to mention the shopping!).  It attracts visitors from all over Europe, mainly because Birmingham International Airport is on its doorstep, and you can literally walk into the exhibition centre from there.  I enjoy showing my quilts, especially when you have spent so much of your time on them.  

The following year I entered it into the Quilts UK Show at Malvern, and was fortunate to be awarded a Judges Choice Award, from the quilter Carolyn Forster, and to win the 2007 South West Quilters Award for Traditional Quilts, which can be seen here on their website .  It also won First Prize in 2007 at the Great Northern Quilt Show, in Harrogate, in the category ‘My First Bed Quilt’.

#2 Butterfly Quilt - Techniques and Construction

#1 Butterfly Quilt - Inspiration Behind the Quilt

#2 Butterfly Quilt - Techniques and Construction



English Paper Piecing the Butterfly Quilt

Construction
The Butterfly Quilt was hand pieced, using the English Paper Piecing Method.  This involves tacking each piece of fabric over a paper template, to give it shape and structure, and then sewing the pieces together.  I tend to leave all the paper in until the top is complete, again, to keep its structure.  I find that this method leaves me with a dead flat top at the end. 

This was a great project.  I spent hours playing with fabrics from my stash and choosing the colour combinations.  It was a great portable project too.  I used my train journey to work to cover paper templates and piece blocks, and it went on many car journeys, as well as holidays to Amsterdam, France and the USA.  This is where all the action took place, and without a fuss, quietly the blocks came together. Once the blocks were together I decided it needed a border to frame it.  I pieced 2.5” x ¾” strips together out of the scraps, and that made up the border, along with calico borders. In a large quilt like this, don’t underestimate how long it will take to remove the paper templates!  For the back of the quilt, I used the same cream calico as on the front. 

Before I put the sandwich together I needed to add the 64 antennae. The antennae of the butterflies are hand embroidered, using a backstitch, in a regular stranded embroidery cotton.

The wadding in the middle is 100% polyester.  All I remember about it is that I wanted one piece of wadding, and with the large quilt, my choices were limited.  I had also previously had a BAD experience hand quilting cotton wadding, which ‘bearded’ on a navy background, so I knew I wanted to give that a wide berth.  Having used the quilt daily for several years, I still really like the feel of it.

Quilting
When it came to the quilting, I knew I wanted to hand quilt it, but I didn’t know where to start.  As the top gradually came together, I knew I had to do something about it, so I booked onto a Sandie Lush Hand Quilting Workshop, at Busy Bees, in Newport. That was a brilliant class, and I left with the confidence to start quilting the Butterflies Quilt.  I didn’t know what to quilt on it, so I made up my own pattern (not without MUCH deliberation), having outlined the butterflies, and ‘stitched in the ditch’ of their bodies.  I remember quilting this quilt quite distinctly. It was July and August in 2006.  It was HOT.  And I was underneath a quilt, hand quilting.  I was quilting to a deadline – I had entered it into the NEC Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, so it had to be done, ready for delivery in August.  Without the deadline, I think I would have done more quilting on it. 

Example of Butterfly Quilt Block

Once complete, I washed it in the washing machine.  I had been dragging this quilt around with me everywhere for a couple of years.  The cat had regularly sat on it whilst I quilted, and the heat of the summer meant that more recently, it had taken the brunt of my perspiration.  It washed up a treat on a 40 degree wash, and luckily the sun remained out long enough for it to dry outside on the washing line. However, almost immediately, it was packed up and taken to the depot where they were collecting the quilts for the show.  I was missing it already.

Further information about the Inspiration Behind the Butterfly Quilt can be seen in earlier posts.

#1 Butterfly Quilt - Inspiration Behind the Quilt

Butterfly Quilt by Frances Meredith

Inspiration
The inspiration for this scrap quilt came from a picture in a quilting book I took out of our local library, early in my quilting journey, about 2003.  The original picture in the book was no more than a couple of inches big, but it was enough for me to work out a pattern for a block.  I like a scrappy quilt, and this quilt used all sorts of fabrics.  At the time, the only patchworking I knew was English piecing, so I made my own paper pattern, cut out all the pieces, and off I went.

History of the Butterflies Quilt
During the period when I was making the quilt, I went to a JOAnn’s store, during a trip to America, where I saw a pattern of the same quilt being sold on the shelves. I guess it was only then that I realised that the quilt I was making already had a history.  Further research when I returned home to the UK revealed that a pattern, and the history of the quilt was published in a book “The New England Quilt Museum Quilts: Featuring the Story of the Mill Girls -Instructions for 5 Heirloom Quilts” by Jennifer Gilbert (Paperback,1999) [NB: Which I notice you can currently access via Google Books].  I discovered that it was originally made in about 1935, by a lady called Nina Shrock, Harvard County, Indiana, USA, using a design by Laura Wheeler. When we were back in America in the Autumn of 2007, we made a pilgrimage to the New England Quilt Museum, in Lowell, where we able to see the quilt on display, the one I had seen originally in my library book, back in the UK.  It was a nice feeling. I now have a pencil with the same butterflies on it, as a memento!

What fabrics did I use?
My creative journey has included dressmaking and embroidery, and it was only in about 2002 that I inherited a collection of beautiful quilting fabric and I considered doing some quilting. Amongst the collection were packets of fabrics, which I later learnt were called Charm Packs.  There were 5” squares, 4“ squares, and tiny 1.5” squares, mainly from a mail order company, Strawberry Fayre based in Chagford in Devon, UK.  I wanted a project that was going to use these up, and the scrappy nature of the quilt, seemed like the ideal choice. 

However, I did notice in the small picture that there were ‘constants’.  For instance, the body of the butterfly was the same for each.  I did not have anything suitable, so I went to my local quilting and patchwork shop, BusyBees, based in the Craft Units at Tredegar House in Newport, Wales.  There I found a brown batik fabric.  I was recommended to give it a wash before I used it. I think that was a good idea.  Otherwise, I didn’t wash any of the fabric – the bits were too small.

There is a whole mix in there.  Ironically, it was only after I had completed the quilt that it was brought to my attention that there were a lot of 30’s reproduction fabrics in it.  This was not intentional, it was serendipity at work.  At the time I didn’t realise what 30’s reproduction fabrics were.  I also have one or two bits of special fabric in there, including the first piece of fabric I ever bought, at the Marldon Apple Pie Fair in Devon, back in the early 1980’s.  You can see details of Techniques and Construction in this post.

Statistics
Dimensions: 243cm x 243cm (approx 8ft x 8ft)
Blocks: 64 blocks, 10” x 10”
Piecing Method: English Paper Piecing. Hand Pieced
Quilting Method: Hand Quilted
Dates: 2004 – August 2006

Awards:
2007 South West Quilters Award for Traditional Quilts, Quilts UK , Malvern
2007 ‘My First Bed Quilt’, Great Northern Quilt Show, Harrogate

#4 Butterfly Quilt - What did I learn from this Quilt?

#3 Butterfly Quilt - Showing the Butterfly Quilt

#2 Butterfly Quilt - Techniques and Construction