Embroidery It: Machine Embroidery Butterfly Quilt

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Machine Embroidery Butterfly Quilt

Dear Friends,

Last spring/summer I took a quilting 101 class. My mother and mother-in-law are both quilters and that is one thing I had never tried my hand at. What you see is my very FIRST quilt I have ever made!

Yesterday I was doing some spring cleaning and working on the garage. While in there I pulled out the Easter decorations. I set the dining room table for Easter and then put away my winter quilts that my mother has made for me.

As I put away the winter quilt that I had on this wall, I was excited to pull out my quilt. I actually finished it before Christmas this past year but tucked it away until now.

As I was assembling this quilt I really wanted to do more with butterflies. I found all the butterfly designs you see on this quilt at Embroidery Library with the exception of the one you see below, the one in the corners of the quilt. I received that design in one of my embroidery club classes at our local sewing store and it was given to me by the instructor. I don't know who to credit this design to.

The six butterflies in the center were embroidered on Floriani's "No Show Nylon Mesh Non-Fusible". To use this product, when the solid design is finished stitching, cut close to the embroidery design. Then use a heat source such as a mini iron, stencil burner or wood burning tool to melt away the edges of the mesh from around the design. ***Caution***Don't touch the embroidery design with the heat source or your thread can easily melt. Do this carefully!!!

Then I stitched the butterflies onto the quilt by hand for a 3-D effect.

For the antennae, I used dark brown embroidery floss and tied knots in the end.

I used monofilament thread to quilt this by stitching in the ditch between the larger red squares and the 9 patch squares.

All the remaining blank red squares were quilted with this Embroidery Library design. These designs on the red squares were embroidered with cotton quilting thread.