Butterfly = Vanessa

My sewing machine broke. E1 error. Won't do anything. Broken. I will have to take her to the Janome doctor. There are definitely pluses that come with all the bells and whistles of modern computery technology. One of the minuses is that when the computer says 'broken', it's broken. It broke down 2 seams into the 36th and final block of the Skill Builder Sampler quilt along that I've been participating in for the last year. Not to be defeated by a trifle such as a broken machine I decided to piece the block by hand.
I present block #36 - Butterfly. My name is the Greek for butterfly apparently, I have known this forever. I don't know if it  translates literally or what but I run with it.

I initially used the brownish strip (from one of the soul blossoms fabrics) for the butterfly body but after setting it out above it just felt bleh. Not enough contrast perhaps? Just bleh!

So I speedily whipped out some navy from the new Lark line and felt much happier.

After my machine went clunk and stopped I hand stitched all the seams. After marking the pieces with 1/4" lines to sew along. It took a long time. This block has it all; curves, inset seams and lots of pieces.

Ta da! My butterfly. Now to get the blocks sorted out and stitched together...

Below are some snaps of the baby quilt I've been working on. It's all finished and ready to be gifted. Bright!

Personalise label.

I do love me a stripey binding.

I did inside-outy seams to give the quilt a bit of texture. I'm not sure how it'll hold up over time but it was a good experiment as I will see the Mama and Dada and they can let me know how it's going.

The shirtings quilt is all quilted and awaiting binding. I like it but don't love it. I do like the softness of it and I especially like...

...this panel on the back. I picked up ages ago just cos I liked it. It makes this quilt kinda reversible. It's a snuggly couchy size quilt. It really needs to be washed to close up all the holes from the original terrible machine quilting and the blood I somehow got on it while I was quilting away.

One more thing before I contemplate my SBS quilt blocks. Anna Maria Horner has a new line coming out Field Study, it looks amazing. I haven't really got on the AMH wagon per se but I can see myself becoming a huge fan.