Butterfly Top

Well, I didn't finish my little butterfly quilt, but I did whip the top into shape.

I took lots of pictures, thinking I'd provide a blow by blow. When I looked at the pictures, it was worse than paint drying. "Wow! She put another oak leaf on the border. Fascinating!" So I'll just show two pictures.

Borders added, leaves fused to the top. Normally I'm a finish the edge kind of gal, but I guess I've been reading Melody's blog too long and I'm leaving these raw.

The subtle difference between the top picture and the bottom one is that I used colored pencil to add shading and veins to the leaves. Gabrielle Swain wrote an article about this last year in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine (maybe the September issue?). I knew the leaves needed some kind of shading, and I didn't want to do all of it with thread.

I hand dyed all the fabric for the leaves and borders - not recently, they were just in my stash.

And now, a portrait of the artist at work. Note the fierce concentration. I cut the leaves out without the wonder under backing paper attached, and since they weren't as stiff I found it slightly more difficult than normal.


Mary asked in the comments about how I created the butterfly image. I don't have time to address that today, but I'll try to do it sometime this weekend.

I had lots more to say, but I gotta go! It's time to cast on for the Knitting Olympics.