Miss Butterfly's Flower Garden: A Zig-Zag Quilt Finish

My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already. –Dave Barry

The average time for a quilt from start to finish for me is 2½ years. I hardly ever work on a quilt from start to finish in one go. I almost always work on it a little bit here and there with a few other projects in between and then come back to it and then work on something else, until I finally decide that it is time to finish something, at which time I pick the project that is the closest to being done. This cute little zig-zag quilt is an exception {for the most part} to that rule. For the last seven weeks, it has been {almost} my sole project. I finished it last weekend and it is already in place on Miss Butterfly's bed.

Almost as soon as I got home from the February 16^th wedding reception my last project went as a gift to, I stared work on this zig-zag quilt for my niece. My sister and I planned it a year ago for her daughter, Miss Butterfly, and I've had the fabrics cut out since early last summer. And then it sat because I had other, more urgent things to work on. Miss Butterfly's birthday was just past mid-way through March, and I wanted to finish it in time for that. I missed the mark by a couple of weeks, getting it to her last Saturday. Even though I worked on in nearly every day since mid-February, and revised my “finish by” date, I still cut it down to the wire. We had a family get-together at my parent's on Saturday and I wanted to finish it by then so that I could deliver it in person, rather than mailing it to her {it is pretty heavy and the recent hike in postage rates has sucked all the joy out of sending and receiving packages}. The party started at 4:00 pm, but 4:00 was when I was putting the last stitches in the quilt. It's about an hour and twenty minute's drive to my mom's, plus all that hurry-up-and-wait while everyone gets their stuff ready to get out the door, so we didn't get there until 6:00. But it all worked out. Miss Butterfly's quilt was finished when we left and I made the matching pillow case {tutorial here} when we got there.

I designed this quilt to go together quickly. The HST's are 6" finished, making it relatively fast to pull a twin-size quilt together. I'd originally planned to quilt arcs from corner to corner of each triangle, in essence putting a “net” of flowers on the quilt. I even named the quilt Miss Butterfly's Flower Garden because of the effect the quilting would have. But once I got into it, I decided against that, worrying that my arcs wouldn't be even or pretty without marking them first. As the quilt came together I realized that the chevron or zig-zag design and the white Kona cotton are both very modern, but the calicos in the colored rows are more traditional and I wanted the quilting to be a good mix of both. Plus, I like to quilt to enhance the design of a quilt, rather than covering it. I settled on echo quilting just a hair wider than ¼" apart in the white, and then I did some loopy half-flowers in the colored zig-zags. I think it is a good fusion of modern and traditional. And the quilt name still works, which is a good thing because I embroidered the label six months before I even started piecing the quilt. The yellow row is my favorite because the quilting really shows up. I'm not sure why the quilting doesn't show up in the other rows as well as it does in the yellow, but it really pops in the yellow.

This is the biggest quilt I've quilted myself. The finished size is 72" x 96". I estimate it took me between 70 and 80 hours to put together. On the low end, 30 hours for cutting and piecing, 40 hours for quilting about about 5 hours for binding, I think I wound at least 20 bobbins. And yes, those are 1" pieced HST's {} around the label on the back {close-up here}. It is a great feeling to have this one finished and delivered to my niece!

Read more about this quilt:
A Start on Piecing
Finished Quilt Top & Label
Quilting in Progress
Quilting in Progress, part 2

Today's post brought to you by:

A Stitch In Time: 2011 Wrap-Up

Seventy percent of success in life is showing up. –Woody Allen

For the past two years, I've been keeping an index of all the projects I finish during each year. It has been fun to look back to see how much I've accomplished in one year. I humbly submit my 2011 finishes.

One Hired Machine Quilting & Binding Job

One Halloween Costume, Two Pieces {skirt & cloak}

Two Fleece Baby Blankets

Three Abbey Bags

Four Church Bags

Four Table Runners

Five Adult Bibs

Six Aprons {one reversible}

Eight Quilts

Twelve Quilted Notebook Covers

Fifteen Fabric Postcards

Eighteen Fancy Pillowcases

In case you lost count, that is 80 finishes, and I enjoyed every one of them. I hope that 2012 is as productive!

More Pillowcases for Christmas

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. –Charles Dickens

I've got eight more Christmas pillowcases finished! I really liked this green dotted fabric so I made a total of four; three here and one I finished earlier.

These stripey pillowcases make me so happy! The fabric is Quilter's Showcase from JoAnn's and it is a really nice weight and a really great price. I happened to catch them on a 50% off sale, so that made the price even better!

And these pink pillowcases are SO cute!

Click on the button below for instructions to make your own pillowcases.

Fancy Pillowcase PDF
I'm really excited about getting closer to being finished! Hooray! The wrapping will begin shortly, and here's a little something to help with the holiday spirit while we all finish things up.



Today's post brought to you by:

Pillowcases for Christmas

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love! –Hamilton Wright Mabie

I've got five pillowcases done! I started with the ones we're giving away the soonest. Mr. Bug's family party is coming up and this tweet pillowcase is for the cousin exchange. I love the little birds.

Here's another one for the cousin exchange on Mr. Bug's side. I really liked this fabric for boys, so there will be four total like this.

One of these is for LadyBug and one is for my brother. LadyBug happened to see the stacks of cut pillowcases and asked who each one was for. I kind of fibbed about some of them {I told her I lost my list, which isn't entirely untrue. I lost the original and then made a new one} to throw her off the scent. I was a little bit pleased when she said, those fabrics are cool. I want a pillowcase out of them.

And this one is Grasshopper's. He's my Little Boy Blue, so I hope that the red turquoise stripes aren't too obtrusive for him. I did my kids' pillowcases in the first batch to get them out of the way. With them hidden away, I'm hoping they will be less likely to figure out that I made pillowcases for them too.

These pillowcases are fast and fun to put together. Click on the button below for instructions.

Fancy Pillowcase PDF

And here's a little Christmas music to sew by. I love the song and the girls who put the video together did a cute job.


Today's post brought to you by:

Super { Service } Saturday

Who was this Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief? Who is the King of glory, this Lord of hosts? He is our Master. He is our Savior. He is the Son of God. He is the Author of our Salvation. He beckons, “Follow me.” He instructs, “Go, and do thou likewise.” He pleads, “Keep my commandments.” Let us follow Him. Let us emulate His example. Let us obey His word. By so doing, we give to Him the divine gift of GRATITUDE. –Thomas S Monson

We all know that women love to get together, especially when there is some sort of creativity going on. There is a kind of tradition that goes on among the women of my church where a large number of projects {along with instructors} are available for you to work on. It is a yearly event and if the project that you wanted to do wasn't there this year, it'll probably be there next year. We call this day Super Saturday.

This year, we decided that instead of making a bunch of stuff to bring home and wonder what to do with, we would donate our time, talents and materials to make something that would be helpful to those in need. There were several projects going on; through the combined effort of the women in my ward {congregation} we tied a quilt to be donated to a local shelter, put together hygiene and school kits to donate to shelters, made headbands, bows and covered notebooks to give kids in the foster care system, and decorated picture frames to be donated to care centers so the residents could keep a picture of their family nearby. The area I was over was the little sewing room, where we had eight machines plus a serger, cutting table and ironing boards. In there, we turned place mats into little tote bags to hold the school kits and we made pillowcases to donate to shelters, foster care and/or the children's ICU at local hospitals. I cut 27 pillowcase kits {all from donated fabric} and we were able to finish 15 of them; several women took the remaining 12 kits home to finish there.

I put these four pillowcases together. The pink one with frogs on the hem is flannel. It is SO soft!

These three have a theme going on. The two on the left are “Go USA,” and the one on the right is kind of “International” with Big Ben on the pillowcase and the names of lots of different countries on the hem.

Here are a few specifically for boys, and there are half-a-dozen other boyish kits out there to be assembled. The bear is a panel, just the right size to make into a pillowcase. It seemed like a really great idea at the time, but now I'm worried that it might give someone nightmares. The skulls are a little creepy too.

I love how these came out! The fabric for these three, along with six others pictured here, was sent to me by my sweet friend, Wanda. She was cleaning out her stash and sent me a bunch of really great fabrics. I've used lots of it for different projects and loved having so many fun choices to use in these pillowcases.

I think that these two are my favorite of the whole bunch. They are so bright and cheerful and I hope they'll make someone's day a little better.

These pillowcases are fast and easy to put together. I've written up a set of instructions, which you can access by clicking on the button below.

Or, you can go directly to the printable Fancy Pillowcase PDF.

This post brought to you by:

Gracie's Pinwheels: Finished is Better than Perfect

The soul's joy lies in doing. –Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Voice and I have come to an agreement. She agrees not to nag me about not pulling out ¾ of a quilt's worth of quilting so I could do it the perfect another way and I agree to ignore her if she does . As a matter of fact, I ignored her long enough on Saturday to get the quilting finished, the binding on, and about half of it sewn down by hand on the back. I finished yesterday, but by the time I'd washed and dried it, there wasn't any light left outside to take a full photo of it.

It is really soft and crinkly and the little girl it is for {who, incidentally, is named Gracie; note the embroidered tag} won't know that it might have been a completely different quilt had I done the quilting another way. Yeah . I can still hear that nagging Voice. It is emotion arguing with reason. The Voice says I made a mistake in the quilting I chose because the flowers are crazy on top of crazy. The Voice said that it could have been better if I'd unpicked and done the quilting another way. I'm telling you, Voice, that you've got to stop. It's not like I threw it together. The workmanship is good and overall I did a really nice job on it {the stitch length in my FMQ was really consistent }. The loopy flowers are really cute. Pulling out all that quilting would have been too much work. Besides, it is done and delivered {Gracie's mom loved it!} and there's nothing you can do about it .

Not that that's settled, I can show you the cute little pillowcase I made to go with it. There was just over a yard left of the pink floral; it just had to be done. I did a little tutorial for Fancy Pillowcases a while back, so if you're interested, you can visit the on-line version or download the PDF version. I folded it up so that it would fit in the picture, but it really is a full-size pillow case.

And for those of you like me, who have to see the whole quilt, here is it. I love the fabrics that Gracie's mom picked! This quilt turned out really fun.

Today's post brought to you by:

Fancy Pillowcase Swap

To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving. -Max Beerbohm

Remember all those fancy pillowcases I showed you? One of them was destined for a swap and the rest are going to be donated to the American Patchwork & Quilting 1-Million Pillowcase Challenge. I hadn't decided which pillowcase to send at the time I posted, but in the end, I went with this cute one. It was one of my favorites. I love the colors and the tea cups are so cute. It is on its way to a new home in Nebraska.

And this beauty came all the way from Canada from my swap parter.

I really like it! The fabrics are really nice quality and I love how the prints go together. The construction is fabulous. She used french seams to hide the raw edges. But I'm still going to include it with my donation to the 1-Million Pillowcase challenge, because it doesn't match anything in my house. I am really thrilled, though, to be giving away something so nice. Whoever is the receiver of it will have a nice pillowcase that will last them a long time.

Fancy Pillowcase Tutorial

I have had a fun time making Fancy Pillowcases this last week. I thought I'd share with you how to do it. In my post about the Fancy Pillowcases, I mentioned that I'm picky about the bed linens matching. Well, truth be told, I'm pretty picky about pretty much everything. So, without further ado:

Fancy Pillowcase Instructions: Picky Version
Downloadable, printable version of this tutorial
Here's what you'll need:
⅞ yard main fabric
⅓ yard hem fabric
¼ yard accent fabric
Matching thread
Iron
Rotary Cutter
Cutting Mat
Rulers
Chocolate

Wash, dry and press all fabrics. {Yes, really. But eat the chocolate while the fabric is in the spin cycle. It makes the waiting much more pleasant. [And if you like to get really picky, may I recommend you serge the raw edges of your fabrics before washing.] Washing and drying shrinks the fabric before you make it into something beautiful. If it shrinks after it is made into something beautiful, sometimes it isn't so beautiful anymore. Pressing helps with a nicer finished project.}

Square up your fabrics. Sometimes the manufacturing process pulls fabric off-grain as it is rolled onto the bolts. Washing, drying and pressing helps to pull your fabric to the straight-of-grain {I usually starch too, but we want the pillowcase to be soft and ready-to-use, so I'd suggest skipping that step for this particular project}. After you have pressed the fabric fold it in half lengthwise, bringing the selvage edges together {like it was on the bolt}. If the fabric puckers at the fold in the center, it means that the fabric was not cut on-grain. Slide the selvages opposite of each other, but keep them parallel with each other until the pucker at the fold disappears and the fabric hangs straight. If the fabric was cut off-grain, the raw edges will not line up with each other anymore and one layer of fabric will be longer than the other both ends. Cut perpendicular to the fold and selvage edges, and this will put the fabric back on grain.

Cut the main fabric to 27½" x width of fabric
Cut the hem fabric to 10½" x width of fabric
Cut the accent fabric to 3½" x width of fabric
{Yes, really. I had you buy extra fabric just for the purposes of shrinkage and squaring up -- which means something completely different to Lydia and Kate than it does in this context. But that's a rant for another day. This means a nicer pillowcase when you're all finished.}

Place the fabrics on top of each other with the folded edges even. Cut away the selvage of all three fabrics {about ½" in from the outside edge} at the width of the narrowest fabric. {No, you don't have to measure. Just make sure your folded edges are lined up. Really. I know, I said I was picky, but I'm only picky about the really important things.}

With right sides together and using a ¼” seam, sew across the width of the fabric along the top edge of the pillowcase. Start at the raw edge and sew to the fold. Sew down the length of the fabric along the raw edges from the top to the bottom. Sew two separate, intersecting seams. This helps to make a nicer corner when the pillowcase is turned.

Finish the raw edges of the inside of the pillowcase. You can either serge {recommended} or zig-zag stitch around the edges.

With right sides together and using a ¼” seam, sew the length {the edges that used to be selvage} of the hem fabric together to form a circle that is 10½" tall. Repeat with the accent fabric, finishing with a circle that is 3½" tall. You will have two separate pieces of fabric. In the picture, it kinda looks like they are somehow sewn together. Press the seams open.

Turn the pillowcase right-side out, Press the seams flat. Fold the hem fabric in half along the width of the fabric, bringing the raw edges together so that you have a tube of fabric that is 5¼" tall. Repeat for the accent fabric, finishing with a tube that is 1¾" tall. Place the hem fabric tube inside of the accent fabric tube, matching the seams. Mark into quarters with pins. Mark the bottom edge of the pillowcase in quarters. Matching the side seam of the pillowcase with the seam in the hem and accent fabrics, pin the right side of the pillowcase with the accent in between the hem fabric and the pillowcase using the quarter-mark pins to line the pieces up evenly. Sew the accent and hem to the bottom of the pillowcase using a ¼" seam.

Finish the raw edge where you attached the hem and accent to the pillowcase by serging or zig-zag stitch.

Turn the hem down to reveal your Fancy Pillowcase. Press the finished pillowcase {yes, really. Don't you see where it was folded, and wouldn't it have looked much nicer in the picture if it were pressed flat?}.

The finished pillowcase should be 32" long, which is plenty long enough for a standard size pillow.

If you follow these instructions and they don't make sense or you end up at a dead end, tech support is available 24-hours*. Use the e-mail button in my side bar and help will be only a moment away.

*Tech support is available 24-hours a day inasmuch as you can e-mail me pretty much whenever you want. 3:00 am? No problem. Type away. I'll get back to you when I get up around noon.