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Grandmother’s Butterflies

  • Vintage

To say I felt honored when presented with this project is quite an understatement. Grandmother’s Butterflies is a quilt that waited a long time for completion. Fifty years is a long time to wait, but this quilt’s time finally came.

Grandmother's butterflies complete
A lovely couple brought these 17 hand-embroidered blocks to my shop one day. The hope was to have them become a completed quilt. The journey began with some challenges.
 
The first was the easy part, we chose fabrics for the sashing and layout. There were 17 blocks so one eventually became a pillow. And, of course, I forgot to get a picture of the sham.
Grandmother's butterflies EQ8

I used Electric Quilt to lay out the design. This one probably didn’t need it as it was simple, but this is often part of my process. Brown fabrics for the front and back would complete the choices.

Quilt Block Prep

The first real challenge was to prepare the blocks. Due to the hand-embroidered nature, the blocks themselves were not flat. Below is a before-and-after look at how they turned out.

Grandmother's Butterflies block before
Grandmother's Butterflies block after

I used best press, heat, my t-shirt press, stabilizer, and lots of love to wrangle these beauties. After all this, they assembled and were ready for the long arm.

E2E Quilting

Ginger Flight seemed like the perfect E2E pattern for this quilt and the owner agreed.

Ginger Butterflies

There is a very deliberate look to these butterflies as they move across the top (and bottom) of this quilt. The decision was to use Linen Glide. This allows the blocks to remain unhindered while showing off the butterflies where the brown fabric resides.

Grandmother's Butterflies Close
Grandmother's Butterflies Close 2

Quit Back and Label

The back of this quilt is a wonderful background for the quilting. This coupled with the label make the quilt all about the butterflies.
 
Grandmother's Butterflies back
Grandmother's Butterflies label

There is also another amazing quilt from the same customer that includes 50 embroidered blocks! But this is for another post.

Quilt Stats:

Quilt Name: Grandmother’s Butterflies
Quilt Size: 60 x 60
Quilting Pattern: Ginger Flight
Thread: Linen Glide
Batting: Warm & Natural 80/20
 
If you want to see more projects 
  1. Visit the Blog Page on my Website
  2. Join the Facebook group Sewing and Quilting with Robyn.  Here you can not only see what I am up to, but also share your own projects!
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