FINISH: Beauty Unfurled

Since I was crunched for time to get this done by the entry deadline, I missed a few process photo opportunities.  

Introducing... BEAUTY UNFURLED

This is my entry for the National Quilt Museum New Quilts from an Old Favorite 2016: New York Beauty.

It has special meaning for me, given the last six months. So while I would like to be among the finalists again this year, I wouldn't mind if it doesn't go traveling for over a year. Have to wait and see what happens.

Happy Veteran's Day!

THANK YOU 

to all those who have served 

this country!!!

I'll be with the DH today - honoring his service and treating him to a few goodies!

Back to the Butterfly

It was time to bite the bullet and layout the wings and into position with the body. While down on the floor, I lightly fused this so I could safely get it to the ironing board without everything shifting around. 

 It was about this time I realized an oversize ironing station would could in really handy.  Need to discuss that project with the DH.  Once I had everything fused, the trimming commenced.

Always need to take a deep breath or two before slicing off parts.  Notice I still don't have any antennae yet - working on it, working on it.

Things quickly progressed (because they had to!) and the quilt was soon a sandwich.

Up next: The finished quilt!

Color: Divergent Path

On Oct. 31st, Bonnie Hunter released the colors for her 2015 Mystery quilt: Allietare

While the colors are pretty they are not found in my stash, even though I am considering doing this quilt in either a smaller size or in miniature. 

On Facebook, I found this color inspiration:

I've always loved cymbidium orchids.  Coincidentally, I've been gathering some interesting batiks  lately that I've been wanting to play with:

So while I will be participating in Bonnie's mystery, my colors will be substituted as follows:

Red = Hot Orange

Gold = Lime

Gray = Purple

Black = Black

Neutrals = Neutrals

Let the games begin!

Out of Body Experience

The wings worked! 

Here they are just laying out on the background fabric - not fused down yet.  I had to laugh at the contrast between the Butterfly quilt and the French Country inspired quilt on the bed underneath. What a difference! 

You may notice a definite missing component to the Butterfly - the body!  I spent so much time on getting the wings right, I hadn't even drafted the body design at the point.

I wanted to keep it simple and in keeping with the fluid flowing design of the wing sections, which to me was round, round, round parts.

This is what I came up with:

Still missing the antennae. Dang - what am I going to do for that? 

Right Wing

This was such a great moment to get to:

And a little scary, as I hadn't yet cut on piece of the navy blue outline pieces.  Nothing like a little stressing over the fit of the puzzle pieces to keep me on my toes!

I put the left wing sections together the same way, before tackling the outline.  To give myself some cushion,  I traced the outline pieces and then cut them out with a generous margin on all the overlapping edges.

It'a really coming together.

Puzzle Pieces Ready

All the fabric is Cherrywood hand dyed 100% cotton.  I laid out the pattern pieces on the correct color to estimate how much I needed to cut off the yardage / fat quarters to apply the fusible web.

For this project I used Wonder Under 805.  Once the fusible web was applied, I traced all the pieces for both the left and right wings, tagging them as I worked.

The most important thing to remember is to remove the paper backing from the fusible before cutting the shapes!

Once all the pieces were cut, I started assembling each section of the right wing separately. 

Right wing, section one on the wing cartoon.

This was the most time consuming, agonizing part. I worried the sections wouldn't be aligned properly to fit against the navy blue outlining.  Just had to let go and ride the wave - what would be, would be.