Butterfly dreaming

So this is what I wrote in August 2011 - "This is a project I started about 2 years ago but of course never got off the ground. It's for my friend's little girl, for her 5th birthday which is in January. The blocks are supposed to be 'log cabin' but I didn't cut the strips of yellow accurately so it won't be exactly perfect but the general jist is 'log cabin'. 4 blocks will be joined together to create an area of yellow and then my plan is to applique fairies on to it. I'm nothing if not ambitious! Anyway it's keeping me out of mischief for the moment..." 

January 2012 - Of course I didn't consistently work on it from August (so many other things going on!) so I had a massive sewing session over the course of a week to get it finished. My delightful inaccuracy in cutting the strips resulted in the blocks not being quite even, but a little bit of trimming sorted that one out! I had lost the original 'log cabin' design which was in a quilting book so I wasn't really sure how to put it together. In the end though I created my own design which I actually like better. 

My next challenge was creating the applique fairies. An easy tip for making applique is to use 'freezer paper'. Unfortunately this is not readily available in NZ (like it is in the States) so I had to order some from a quilt shop in Hamilton called Grandmother's Garden. When I began cutting out all the little pieces for the fairy I realised it was going to be way too fiddly to create, so I abandoned that idea and decided to go with a butterfly motif which was a lot quicker to create and sew!

I didn't have time (or the money) to have the quilt machine quilted so I had to do it by hand and because of the size it didn't take too long. I quilted around the appliqued butterflies and quilted smaller butterflies in the inbetween spaces. I finished by quilting hearts on the border. 

Here's the final quilt!