Ta Da, It's Flutter!

Flutter is finally finished!

I started this quilt in 2015.  The top went fairly quickly.  I knew I wanted to hand quilt it but the finished top sat in my sewing room until early this year because all my hand sewing time was taken up with Rondeau.  After a false start with a quilting design that wasn't quite right, I landed on this pattern of diagonal lines and am pleased with the way it came out.  

I didn't quilt through the butterflies, just around them, which made things easier.  Hand quilting through the added layer of fabric plus the adhesive from the fusible web would have been difficult.  But the butterfly pieces are small so this works out fine.

By the way, my new favorite tool is this Clover needle threader, wow, is it ever fantastic!  Well worth the price, it makes threading the small eye of a quilting needle a breeze!  Why didn't I get one of these earlier, it would have been so handy while I was English paper piecing too?  Live and learn and now I won't be without one.  If you are certain that the eyes of needles keep getting tinier and tinier, along with the font size in newspapers and restaurant menus, you need one of these gadgets.  So easy to use!

In the photo above, you can see how the quilting design comes together across several blocks.

I used a variety of ecru fabrics for the block backgrounds and a Hoffman strip pack/jelly roll for the butterflies.  (A charm pack will work too.)  I used a dark brown tone-on-tone from my stash for the binding, it matches the butterfly bodies though you can barely see it.  The pattern is Little Butterflies by Laundry Basket Quilts. There is a stencil available that makes cutting out the shapes much easier.

Must go, I have another quilt waiting to be bound.