Challenge, check!

    I finished my butterfly panel challenge yesterday and to say I’m happy with it would be an understatement. I’m thrilled!
     This started with a Christmas gift from my friend Sophie and a challenge to “do something.” We were supposed to have them done last May (I’m very late with this!), but I  couldn’t proceed with a plan. Once I finally had a plan I didn’t really have any problems finishing the piecing.
     But. Then I was afraid to begin the quilting. I took the plunge Saturday and It went very well. I quilted gentle breezes into the sky, circles on the butterfly wings, a small feather in the one border and scrolls in the other. The outer pieced border was a challenge. The piecing had bumpy intersections where eight seams met, so I didn’t feel I could do any all over design, so I stitched in the ditch and added a motif in the wings.
     This project is around 36 inches square. Now that it’s done, I’m left wondering why I was so afraid. Lesson learned: Take the plunge and do it. Give yourself permission to learn.
     Now if I can only transfer this to my next project!
     An overall view:



     I'm linking to Design Wall Monday , the Free Motion Quilting Project, and Let's Get Acquainted Monday.

Design Wall 4/1/13

 

    I've spent the last couple days piecing these strings for a quilt I'm making along with my friends, the Material Girls. We're making this as a memorial for our friend, Joe, who passed last month. He was married to one of our members, S.

   She wanted to use some of her Asian fabrics which she's been collecting for at least 20 years. We picked out this pattern from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site, and we're all going to piece strings.  When we have the strings, we'll pick out the background fabric or fabrics, and we'll decide on a border when we can see the center. Right now, I'm leaning toward a string-pieced border; I'm pretty sure we have enough fabric cut for it! S was extremely generous with the ones we picked out.

    I used my Accuquilt Go! and it really didn't take very long compared to using a rotary cutter.

I’ve done string piecing before and didn’t enjoy it, but I loved doing this! Maybe it was the variety of perhaps the ones I was using were so different from mine but it was so fun!  We have a tentative plan of getting this together later this spring. I’m not sure about the quilting. We’ll decide that later.   More about this project later. I’m linking up to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times. Check out the cyber creativity!

Please excuse the formatting errors. I cannot get Blogger to work today!