Scrap Bag Challenge - Quilt Reveal!

Well, this is it! It's such a great feeling to have this WiP finished. It started at the beginning of the year and I fully intended to have it finished well before now, but other things kept popping up! I can't say it turned out exactly how I envisaged, but it's pretty close to what I had in my head. The process was an interesting one, as I had originally intended to use this method as shown by Kati from 'from the blue chair'. Kati uses Pellon® 542 Stick-N-Washaway™which is not available in Australia (well, now that I've finished this quilt it probably is!). If I was thinking ahead I would have checked the product availability before cutting out all those 1 3/4" squares!! I thought about using a lightweight fusible interfacing as seen here, but I thought it might make the quilt a bit too stiff, particularly as it is, hang on - I forgot to measure it! It is now with Christine from Once Upon A Quilt, but it was roughly 40" (100cm)  x 30" (75cm).

So, I decided to do it the difficult, tedious way and piece all the little squares together one at a time. I started with my original sketch:

After a few late colour changes and some voluntary colouring by Zoe I labelled each row to make sure that I didn't get all mixed up.

As I added a square to each row I put a dot in the relevant square so that I knew where I was up to. This worked well until I was about two thirds of the way finished. The rows were getting so long that it taking longer to check that I wasn't putting the same fabric next to consecutive rows. Up until now I wasn't bothered with sewing the rows in numerical order, but the time had come when it was much easier to!

As I began sewing up the complete rows (it's quite tricky sewing with your fingers crossed!) I thought I'd pulled it off until I noticed that row 17 was missing a square. In order for the butterfly's 'body' to align it had to be pushed to the right. A bit of unpicking to rectify it and I was back on track.

I opted for some dense shadow quilting in the background and some softer curves for the wings. A friend kindly donated the backing fabric - the perfect colour for the butterfly and the pink polka dot binding.

I think my favourite part of this quilt is the curly proboscis! As the quilt is small I added pocket corners for the option of hanging it.

Throw it in the washing machine (with a couple of colour catchers!) and then in the dryer (for that lovely crinkliness!) and there it is!

Editor's Note: If you decide to bid on this cutie please note that the quilting and the points are not perfect!

Linking up with Quokka Quilts