84" x 84"
2025
After completing the challenging hand-piecing of my Patchwork of the Crosses top, I craved an easier pattern for my next zone-out-in-front-of-the-tv hand-piecing project. I came upon She Can Quilt’s “Butterflies” lap quilt and spent some time tracing the origin of the pattern to Fan Quadrille, a Mountain Mist pattern (#3364) as recorded in Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns of course after discovering that She Can Quilt published that provenance right on her blog post (insert eye roll here).
After drafting my own pattern, I had a blast looking through the results of decades of fabric hoarding to find just the right hues for each of the flowers. My design “rule” was not to duplicate fabrics within the same block, but mistakes were made… This easy pattern made many trips with me over the course of its creation, to Washington DC, Costa Rica, Italy, and Kuwait, among others. I love me a transportable project.
The resulting blocks looked more like big, bold beautiful flowers rather than butterflies or fan quadrilles so hence the name. I free-motioned bubbles, suns, flowers, and my signature wavy lines in the borders and sashings, and leaf shapes and veins in the block petals. Green avocado fabric bought at a guild sale provided the perfect finish for the binding.
Thanks to the Guernsey Memorial Library in Norwich NY for allowing me to photograph inside their beautiful facility, and to Fred for his always reliable assistance.
Hand-pieced and free-motion machine quilted.
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