WIP - Butterfly Quilt

This post is going to be big on photos, low on written content.  I have retyped the opening sentence about six times and I just can't get my brain to work, I need me some sleep.  To cut to the chase - next week at the Australian Machine Quilting Festival, Mum's booth is going to be the home to the Accuquilt Go! Baby and it was my job to make a sample.  A while ago I had pinned this quilt and this week I made it using the Go! Baby Critters cutter.  I loved the original quilt so much that I even used the same fabric, Marmalade by Bonne and Camille - they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

I cut out and pressed 5" squares of visolene to the back of a charm pack, then took them for a spin through the Go! Baby.

Look how cute it is!

Pretty soon I had done the lot.  I used all 42 charm squares from the Marmalade charm pack...

Here they are all laid out.  It took me a while to work out how I was going to attach them without marking the background fabric.  I was afraid that by ironing the pen marks I would make them permanent.  So in the end I cut a piece of fabric 44" x 50" and ironed a crease of 4" around the edges to create a border and to give me something to line my ruler up with....

I then lined my ruler up with the creases and working on a 6" grid placed and ironed my butterflies down.  As you can see by the end I had a ridiculous set up with rulers on my ironing board but somehow it worked.  I could only see a small section of the butterflies at any one time and was worried that by the end of it the line of them would be curved up like my handwriting does when I write on a blank page.

I then secured them with some very basic raw edge applique.  I started off doing a blanket stitch which looked gorgeous but it was taking too long and this baby needed to be finished in two days.  So I decided that raw edge was more funky and it only took a couple of minutes per butterfly, which clinched the deal!

And here it is hanging over the bar of my mum's longarm machine waiting patiently to be quilted.

With any luck I'll be back in a few days to show you the finished product.  I would have liked to custom quilt it like the original pin, but time is of the essence so it is going to get pantoed.  Is that even a word?  Bedtime I think!

As usual I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced and Quilt Story, so head on over and spread the love!