Allie asked in a comment why I was marking the new quilt square on the thin film before putting it onto muslin. First I have always machine pieced and usually start with the 5 sided block nd then go from there. Well at this point I am tired of spending more time trying to figure how and what to do so I decided to pick a project where I could follow directions for a change. Hence the butterfly quilt. It is shown at the http://www.piecemakers.com/ in the calender section. It is the 2009 calender. I have been impressed with their calenders and every time one has been CQ I have bought it.

It is a large size with 14" monthly blocks plus the center motifs with triangle cq corners and various sashings and blocks. I decided to cut it down to 10" blocks and worked out reducing the center block and triangles accordingly. When I realized I was doing a block roughly the actual size of the calender picture I took the easy way out of drawing up the squares. I placed this very thin fabric over each embellished block and roughly drew the block on it. I will now transfer these markings to muslin using my light box when I return this weekend to Chicago. I could not have done that straight to the muslin. Now the blocks will not end up the exact way I have drawn them. For one thing being reduced from 14" to 10" made for some very small pieces and I find it difficult to embellish very small pieces. Also I will want to add some concave and convex curves ( as per Judith Baker Montano's teaching in class) as I start to piece but it gave me an easy start. I guess I would just have to say I am being brain lazy Allie.

The fabric you see pinned to this block temporarily is a sheer gray fabric with silver butterflies on it. I found this at JoAnnes and ironed on the thin knit type of interfacing to give it enough body. I have placed one in each of the 5 sided pieces. They are not the same each time. There were 4-5 different butterflies. Now the question is do I use them? as when ironing on the interfacing my ironing board was covered in sparkle and when cutting more sparkles appeared on my cutting table. I wonder if this will be a problem long term. Will my butterflies fade away? I was thinking of spraying the pieces with some kind of fixative but do not know what to use so will put that question out on the list and see what great minds can come up with.

I will definitely make this my own by changing embellishments, etc. but at least when I can't think I can look and get ideas. The middle butterfly on mine will not be red. I am sticking with a black, gray, white, mauve color scheme with other little bits of color thrown in and think I will make fabric for the butterfly on my babylock embellisher machine. Time will tell. That will probably be the last thing I do so will pick up my color from what the blocks end up. As we all know, our plans change as we proceed.