I'm glad that I can finally post a bit about the secret project I was working on.  I'm part of a private online quilting group that started a few years ago.  We keep in touch on Facebook and meet in person once a year at a retreat.  We come from Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.  One of our dearest members was going through a hard time, so we decided to make her a lap quilt with heart blocks made by us all. 

The blocks were sent to me along with some snowballs made by a few members, and it was my job to put the quilt together and quilt it on Big Mama, my longarm.  Here are a few of the blocks.  Aren't they charming?!

I decided to rely on my favorite - hand applique.  Here's mine:

I interspersed the 15 heart blocks with the snowballs.

Then I chose some border fabrics

and a flannel backing to make it cuddly.

Putting it together was sometimes challenging.  One woman's 6 1/2 inches is another woman's 6 1/4 inches, but I got it all to work.  Here's the finished top.

Diane commented on my last post that I could make index-card windows to audition different spots on my fabric for the three butterfly parts,  I followed her advice and chose a darker gray background for the back wing and body and a lighter shade with lots of spots for the front wing.

Today I finished appliqueing the bud and flower and pressed the fabric pieces around the freezer paper for the butterfly.  I laid the butterfly on the background to see how it looks so far.  I haven't attached the butterfly or done any embroidery yet, but I think it's going to be much better in this fabric.  (I still struggle to photograph the colors in their correct values.)

The bud will be connected to the stem with a slim embroidered stem.  I'm thinking of mixing green and lavender threads in that little stem and using two shades of gray thread for the lines on the butterfly.

I haven't posted in a while, not because I haven't been sewing but because I've been working on a secret project for a friend.  When it is delivered, I'll post about it here.

Finally, I'm back to working on the butterfly-in-the-rain challenge quilt!  I've been fairly happy with the appliqued stem and leaves, but it's so hard to get points on those skinny leaves.  After the very close work on stitching those, I took a step back and looked at the whole picture.  The stem, leaves, and flowers looked lovely until I threw on the yellow butterfly.  Yuck!

The other colors and designs were so subtle, that the butterfly looked like a cartoon character.  Even the one drawn on graph paper with a pencil looked better.  Although the yellow was the palest shade I had, it ruined the rainy effect I had created with the mottled stems and leaves and grayish lavender flower.

My friend Andrea and I had planned a field trip to Olde City Quilts in Burlington, NJ, today, so I took this block along, and she (and the friendly staff at the shop) helped me pick out this fabric.  I never would have chosen it, or even looked at it, myself.  I was thinking of plain white or gray.  The white would have been too stark and not improved the situation.  And, really, who wants a gray butterfly?  This is a batik with a white and gray background and scattered dots of turquoise and lavender.  I bought a quarter yard to give me lots of background shades and dots to choose from. 

Here's a close-up.  The color is somewhere between these two photos.

I think that I'll divide the butterfly pattern into three parts: the two wings and whatever that other piece is that hangs down.  The body?  I also think I'll switch to a more subtle embroidery thread than black.  Maybe charcoal gray. 

It feels a little crazy to do the whole butterfly again, but I have a lot more time to put into this, especially the quilting with beads, so I want to like it when it's finished.  Snow is predicted for tomorrow, so I'm hoping for lots of time to remake the butterfly.

I'm happy finally to be ready to put some of this picture on the background.  I wasn't pleased with my big lumpy flower.

I decided to make four petals instead.  I think this will look better.

I really liked the exact curve of the stem, so I had to figure out how to transfer it from the sketch to the fabric.  I decided that I could cut out the stem and then use my Bohn ceramic chalk pencil inside of the hole I cut to make the inside line of the curve.

Hey, ho!  Here we go!

I made some progress on the weather challenge quilt today.  While I love hand applique, I can't say that prepping the pieces is my favorite part of the job.  Today I prepped the leaves and the sepals.  OK, I confess that I had to look up the name of those green, leaflike things at the base of a flower.  Sepals - nice.

I pulled out all of my green fabrics and finally went with a fabric that is barely green - more blue-gray with a little violet in it.  I think it will make the leaves and stem look the way they might on a rainy day.  So far, they look like green beans.  I'm really worried about getting the points on the ends of these ever-so-slender leaves.

I was pleased to use my Christmas gift from my friend Andrea: the numbered pins.  I admired them at a guild retreat, and she remembered and got them for me.  Isn't she swell?  The pins match the numbers on my sketch.

I don't want to tell you how long I wrestled with the bud.  I'm still not sure that I'm satisfied with the sepals.  The fabric wanted to ravel at that inside point, and I think I sacrificed the outside points to fight it into place.  I may make a new one tomorrow.  (My camera seems to want to make this distinctly lavender fabric look pink.)

I cut out the large flower as one piece, but I think it looks like a big lump.  Tomorrow I'll make four separate petals and build the flower that way.  (Look at that!  The flower is the same fabric as the bud, and it looks lavender.  Makes no sense!)

I always reply to people who tell me that they wouldn't have the patience to make a quilt that it doesn't require patience if you love it.  Well, I still love it, but I have to admit that it's requiring some patience today.

I suppose that I am one of about half a million bloggers who have made a resolution to return to blogging in 2015.  Maybe I'll be the one to keep it up.

I think I'll jump right in with what I'm working on now.  My guild's yearly challenge in coming up in April.  I'm quite sure that no one in the guild pays any attention to my blog, so I think I can post photos here.  The theme this time is "Weather."  I've decided to make a wall hanging based on the title of an old children's book, "Where Does the Butterfly Go When It Rains?"

Here is a sketch I drew on graph paper from a photo I found online.

I was most worried about creating the butterfly, because if I couldn't pull that off, the whole thing would be a bust.  I've worked for two days on it.  I decided to hand applique the blue lines and embroider the rest in black on a soft yellow cotton.  I'll cut out about 1/4 inch around it all and hand applique it to the background.

I'm using a lovely navy batik for the background, green for the grass and leaves, and a soft lavender (which, unfortunately looks pink in the photo) for the flower and bud.  I'll scatter some small white flowers in the grass.

The diagonal lines in the sketch will be hand quilted lines of rain.  I bought some tiny navy/iridescent beads to put into about every fifth stitch of quilting to make raindrops and some clear/iridescent beads for the edges of the butterfly's wings and to sew scattered in the grass.

I'm not worried about the stems, leaves, and flowers, but I really don't have a good plan yet for the grassy area.  I'm thinking maybe a mix of applique and embroidery again.  I love a good, scary project.

I've been traveling a bit - to a wonderful quilt retreat with online friends and to a family event in Vermont, so the sewing I've been doing is mostly adding hanging sleeves and labels to the quilts I'm putting into our guild show.

I did take advantage of the trip to Vermont to go to the Shelburne Museum.  There were two quilt exhibits.  I spent a lot of time in the textile building with about 30 of the quilts from their permanent collection of about 800.  I loved the variety and was impressed by the strong documentation. 

This was the featured quilt.  It is a beauty, but I noticed that the border on the right is clearly farther from the quilt top than the right border.  If you look at the stems of the roses, you can see that they are carefully curved to form a symmetrical pattern - that falls apart with the top left rose!  Two pretty obvious mistakes, and yet this quilt stopped traffic as people walked through the textile display.  It's a good lesson.

I thought this was an interesting use of silk neckties.  I'm not usually a fan of necktie quilts, but this one is quite elegant.

The second exhibit was all star quilts - mostly Bethlehem stars - just donated as a group.

I was shocked that only two of the almost forty quilts were attributed to the maker.  All others were by "unknown."  For Pete's sake, label your quilts!

This one, by an unknown Odawa Indian woman was just amazing.  The applique was made to look like the porcupine quill work of her tribe.