Well, I whipped these littles out this week--sort of. I was wavering between doing red and purple butterflies, and purple won out. I remember I struggled with purple during Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) last year because I don't have many purples--and some are pretty ugly. But my butterfly bits are small, so I still had enough to use for them.
I was rolling along with the foundation paper piecing, and then it was time to put the dotted background bits in. Uh, oh. They were not in my butterfly bin. Somewhere along the way with this project, I cut all my background pieces out so that they'd be ready to quickly sew each month. But also, somewhere along the way, I decided to make 56 butterflies instead of 48. Never thought about cutting more backgrounds. So that slowed me down a bit. Luckily, I did have enough of the background fabric left to cut the rest.
Now I have all 56 sets of wings finished, 8 of each color. Here are some of my favorites:
Don't you love all those little frowsies? They'll get cleaned up eventually. I'm really glad I made purple instead of red butterflies--the color balance seems better to me. I think red would have been overwhelming. Next month I'll get the brown bodies attached, and then the fun begins of adding the outer triangles and sewing up the top. Just as a reminder, this pattern is Butterfly Dance (the mini version) by ellis and higgs. The string piecing on foundation papers is my twist on it. It's a super fun pattern which I have made SEW much use of. I don't often repeat patterns, but this is my third quilt, and actually many more if you think of it that the pattern is for a mini quilt with only four butterflies in it, and my quilts are all throw quilts. I have some ideas for another, too...
No RSC crumb blocks this month. I just do not have enough purples to make them in the low contrast way I'm making this project. I do need one more set of blocks, and I'm leaning heavily toward black prints. Maybe I could even sneak in some really dark purples with those.
I'm linking up this week with Angela, the wonderful host of RSC19, for ScrapHappy Saturday at So Scrappy and with Cynthia, also a wonderful scrappy host, for Oh Scrap at Quilting is more fun than Housework.
I hope you have had some fun in the scraps this month!
(I'm not affiliated with any company, so when I mention products, services, or stores I'm just documenting what I used or liked.)
Two quick quilts today for Throwback Thursday. I don't have much information about the first one. I think it might have been a kit quilt.
Sometime in the 1980's, my sister-in-law asked if I could quilt it. I'm not sure if she made the top or if a relative of hers did or if they both worked on it. I just remember that I jumped at the chance to do the quilting. At that time I was a hand quilter. In fact, it was my favorite part of making a quilt, and I thought of making a top as a way to get to the quilting. So this was the perfect project for me. I do not remember whether I marked the designs or if the top was pre-marked. I've enlarged a bit of the photo so you can see it better. I know it's fuzzy, but it does show the sort of spirograph style flowers, circles and outlining. Does anyone remember these kinds of quilts and any details about them?
And now, I don't even remember whether I did the binding or not. If so, it was my first (only?) scallop binding. Wow, for a Throwback Thursday quilt, this sure is short on memory. We'll just blame it on young motherhood and the fact that I didn't need to keep track of my work since it was for a family member, not for hire. I gave my quilting as a gift to my SIL that year, (Christmas? Birthday? I don't know). She put it on her oldest daughter's bed, which is the one in the photo.
I was "hired" by my mother-in-law to make this second quilt.
The churn dash pattern is one I made (or quilted) often during my tiny quilting career (which you can read about if you click on the "my tiny career" label on the right sidebar). This quilt was to be an anniversary gift for friends of my in-laws. My MIL wanted Delft colors to celebrate the couple's Dutch heritage. While I was making it, I decided to pep it up just a little bit with one red churn dash block, which led to the name of the quilt: Tulip in the Delft--one of the rare times I named my early quilts.The quilting is outlining in all the background fabrics except the red block so that one would poof out a bit. And then I did my signature leafy vine pattern in the border. Here's the back:
I made this quilt in September 1988. It measures 13 1/4 by 11 1/2 inches.
Well, since this post is short on content, I'll include just one more quilt--one I made for our family room. It still hangs there.
I've shown lots of mini quilts on my blog over the years, but aside from a couple of tiny pictorial quilts, I've never made a really tiny quilt for us except for this one. It's from a pattern I bought. The folder says it's from Mary Herschleb Designs in Hudson, Wisconsin. The copyright date is 1995, which makes sense, because that is the year we moved to a new house, and my daughter and I set to work painting birdhouses for decoration. It was a fun little quilt to make--paper foundation pieced, with tiny black buttons used to "quilt" it. I used all scraps. Even the background is a variety of prints. I used black embroidery thread to attach the buttons and tied it in bows on the back. Not sure why I did it that way, but there you have it.
Now that I look at it more closely, I guess I did a bit of actual quilting around the yellow border. The birdhouses have long since been packed away (first step toward donation), but the little quilt still hangs on the side of an antique china cabinet in our family room. The quilt measures 13 1/4 by 11 1/4 inches.
Well, that's almost it for my Throwback Thursday posts of my pre-blog quilts. I guess you can tell I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for content about these last ones, but it is good to have them all documented. I have just one more quilt (as far as I can tell) to post about, but I don't have a photo of it, which seems really odd to me, because it's a big quilt. Since the quilt is owned by my daughter and son-in-law, it will not be a problem to remedy that.
I'm linking up today with Sandra at mmm! quilts for Throwback Thursday. Go there to read her always interesting and delightful post about her own pre-blog quilts and post some of your own if you have any.
