My First Tutorial : Fabric Origami Butterfly

The year 2015 will be, for me, a year of trying out new things.  So today, here's my first tutorial. It is about the Fabric Origami Butterfly. I showed it on my blog before and many of you wanted to know more so here goes. I hope you will enjoy it.

First, you need two (2) pieces of different fabric, cut 5.5 X 4 inches. (14 X 10 cm) The fabric can complement each other or be of contrasting colours. It's up to you.  Of course, I picked orange!

With the right sides together, sew 1/4 inch all around leaving an open space for turning it inside out.

Don't forget to clip the corners before turning. 

Press and hand sew the opening shut. Fold once on the long side, finger press, open flat and then fold once on the short side and finger press, in order to find the middle of the fabric.

At this point, I find it is easier if I pin the middle.

Take the bottom left "corner" (which is actually a fold) and bring it up BETWEEN the two upper left corners.

 Bring it up as high up as the MIDDLE PIN will let you.

Then pin at about 3/4 inch (1.8 cm) from the bottom. Do the same thing with the right side. Can you tell I am left handed?  Ok back to business.

Now that the butterfly is pinned, you need to bring down the "wings". So take the upper left corner, only the top one, and lift up and bring it down towards the bottom pin.

 and go a little bit to the left of the middle pin.  Pin the wing down.

You will do the same thing with the other side and bring it just to the RIGHT of the middle pin. Again pin.

Now you should have a 3D butterfly.

 A very puffy butterfly!!

 You don't like what you see? Try it again with the other fabric on top. Like this:

 What a difference it makes! Is it better ?  I find it looks like a moth lol.

Now press (or not) but this time with a hot iron. Then you whip stitch it in place. I stitch in 5 places : where the wings touch the second wings (at the bottom, 3 layers); where the wings touch the "body", (in the middle, 2 layers) and at the top to close the front and back shut (at the top). I start from inside the butterfly so the knot doesn't show. At the top, I work the needle under the little fold so doesn't show. In this picture of the back, you can see the five points I whip stitched.

And voilà!  You got an origami butterfly. Now comes the hard decision of what you will do with your butterfly. Will you sew it to a tote, a hat, glue a magnet to it or a broach or ... embellish a quilt maybe?!  You know Easter is just around the corner and don't these butterflies call for Spring ?

 Group photo!! These are the few that haven't flown away yet lol. I usually give them as fast as I can stitch them.  I see that the red ones are all gone ... again.

They look good with any kind of fabric.  Really, any kind at all.

I took this picture to show the different wings I make. The Icy one (on top) is hard to photograph but you can see its "over" wings are triangular. The blue on the left has long large "over" wings and the blue on the right has almost no "over" wings but shows more the bottom wings. Usually, they look like the Plaid one. It's all up to you and how you whip stitch it.

Some of these are a tad smaller like the yellow one. I've cut the fabric 5.5 X 3.75 (14 X 9.5 cm) and I like it a lot. 

Here's a picture of the very first one I made.

 It's not a moth, its a mam-moth! LOL

I have found this idea at  La Ruche des Quilteuses. It's a French blog but they have gorgeous photos and the tutorial has many pictures too. She also has two other patterns: the Turtle Butterfly and the Pencil Butterfly.

I hope you have enjoyed my first tutorial.  Can I say there will be a multitude of butterflies migrating all over the world ?

Until next time .... sew away!!

(^;

EDIT: it was first posted on March, 2015. The post got a lot of viewers and some unwanted kind too, unfortunately. Because of those less favorable visitors, I decided to removed it from my blog. Now, I want to try it again. Enjoy!

Design Wall Monday

Already a week since my last post. Oh MY! I can't keep up lately! Well, let me bring you up to date right now.

Still working on the same quilt. Well, maybe working is a BIG word here, but I can honestly say I've been playing with the settings. I hope you are not fed up of looking at this quilt because you're about to see a lot more pictures of it :))

I sew together all the Broken Dish (BD) blocks for the bottom outer border and ... it's not wide enough. It doesn't leave me enough room for a decent inner border on the sides. So... I have to find a way to make it wider.

I thought of this ...

The border has 17 BD blocks so I can't put this in the middle because there is no middle!!   Then I came up with this ...

Like it is fragmented or something ... like ... YUCK!!

How about this then? Like an island in the middle of the border ... like ... sinking!! OK! OK !  back to the drawing board.

Look what my boys are working on. So cute with lawn mower, satellite dish and is that a barbecue behind the tree?  OK ! back to MY drawing board.

I have four little BD left to play with ... hmmmm ... you know ... I got ....

... nothing !! 

Oh! Wait ! How about ... 

FLUTE !! It's too small ... but it has potential ... Yeah!  If you will excuse me, I need to recalculate these measurements. Be back later. 

Until next time .... keep sewing. 

;^)

Linking to Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday.   ;^)  Hope to see you there. 

Also linking to A Quilting Reader's Garden for  WIP's be gone! Come and visit us there too.

Is it Monday ?

It's only Monday!!

I am so tired I feel like I am due for a weekend LOL! 

Days are going by so fast lately, like NASCAR fast!!  I'll try to pause it long enough to show you a few pictures. Here goes. 

I had a LOT of fun  this weekend working on setting these little broken dishes blocks around my latest quilt. I've changed the setting of these blocks so often, remember? 

Yes, you've guessed right. I took half a million pictures because I had so half a million ideas and too many blocks, or not enough, depending on the design/inspiration of the moment.

Am I settled?  Am I happy with this design ? Not sure. So it stayed that way overnight and the next morning, it was still looking pretty good to me so ...  I nailed it. 

Here it is (well, part of it) on my wall, sewn in a four patch group at the moment. I managed to finish two Double 9 patch blocks too. 

Oh but wait! I forgot to say... my wall is not on the same wall anymore. It was between my 1950 sewing machine Hélène and my computer. I didn't like it there. It was rubbing me of a lot of space, if that makes any kind of sense. 

So in between session of moving little Broken Dishes blocks, I moved the wall! 

It is now in front of the Janome's desk, near the window. I am happier with this arrangement .... for now lol.

I also found a few seconds to stop at a second hand store and I found this... 

Funny picture! It looks like it has only two legs, lol, but the ones on the side do touch the floor, I swear! I know it is NOT a real antique piece of furniture. Someone was smart enough to rescue some pieces from an antique dresser to make this little ... uhhh ... end table? ... coffee table? Whatever! To me, it's a new place to display some of my quilts. Can you see them, all nicely folded and snugly tucked in there?  Of course I can take some pictures to show you. What are quilters for? lol.

Linking to Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday. See ya there. 

Until next time.... 

Enjoy !

;^)

Slow Sunday Backward Stitching

I just want to cry.  I know I've said 2015 would be a year of "firsts" but I didn't mean that kind. It's not my day even though it is Woman's Day !!

I have finished row 8 on Take 21 and it is time to do some major fixing as there's only two more rows to quilt.

I have discovered a BIG mistake when I finished row 7 and rolled the quilt lower on the frame. At that time, my heart sank and I wanted to cry.  I still do. Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong with this quilt. :(
Look!

Do you see what is wrong here? How about in the picture below?

If you said no batting and backing behind the quilt in the first picture, you are right. If you think there's way too much backing and batting in the second picture, you are right again.  I have rolled my quilt wrong. It is NOT the first quilt I set up on this frame and yet it's the first time I do it wrong. I did worst than a debutante would have! I am so discouraged right now. Why didn't I see my mistake when I started to quilt it? Because I was in a hurry! I thought I could quilt it before his birthday and had to hurry!! Look where I am now! So depressed.

I unpinned the top part of the quilt and laid it on the floor. Carpet, quilt, batting, backing = wrong order. The backing should extend beyond the quilt, not the other way around.

Don't know if you can see the pencil line on the batting in an effort to cut it straight so I could add to it. It wasn't an easy task as everything is kind of warp by the pinning to the frame.

Tried to piece the batting but my back wanted nothing to do with this idea of working bent over while sitting on the floor...





... and I have such a loooooooooooong way to go still.  What am I going to do?? I didn't want to remove the entire quilt from the frame as I don't think I would be able to pin it back. Since the layers are quilted together, pinning them back on could be quite a task because of the weight. Then I thought "How can I pin the batting to the frame when it is pieced so close to the edge? Won't it come undone when I roll it taut?" See, in this kind of quilting frame, the layers are not basted together. I didn't want to put the batting to the test. So I had no other choices but to remove it completely from the frame.

Then, I sat at the sewing machine, tried to zigzag the batting together.

Then back on the floor to cut the backing straight. I was lucky enough to still have the left over of this backing. (It's the perfect backing for this quilt as the print has the same colours.)

I still had the original piece I had cut off. It was in the flannel scrap box, waiting to be cut into 2.5 inches for the next Crumb quilt. Thank goodness I didn't had time to do that. Then the phone rang. I thought "I don't want to talk to anyone right now. I want to finish this." My son came down the stairs, handed me the phone. I shook my head. He said "she wants to see the house."  Again, I just wanted to cry. I looked around me at the mess. My entire house is a mess because of the new job and the lack of energy in the evening I basically did nothing this past week. Oh! Her timing is so wrong !! And she wanted to come by THIS afternoon! NO! I can't. For the FIRST time in the two years the house is for sale, I said no! Anyway, back to the quilt.

I pinned the monster to the leftover flannel backing. By that time, my back was really angry at me and it was letting me know every which way it could.

Of course, all this excess work deserved a cherry on top, right? So the light in my sewing machine gave up on me. Got myself a lamp and sew on. Then the backing sifted and I was sewing only one layer. Arrgghh! Ripped, pinned some more and sew on. It was hard to move all this bulky fabric around and I had to make sure that the flimsy underneath didn't get caught on the drawers or the corner of the desk or worst, under the needle !

As I was ironing the seam open, I realized another important thing. I should have basted the quilt before doing all this. As I sew the backing and while ironing it. all the weight of the quilt was pulling on my tiny little hand quilting. Oh my!! I tried to keep the entire quilt on the ironing board. Then, I went back on the floor and flattened it out.

Then the cavalry of good friends finally showed up and started to hold the quilt down. I feel so much better now. It took me three hours. Now I go and have some lunch. It's 1:30!

There is something so sad about an empty quilting frame. I have to find another quilt for it to hold in its long arms.

I marked a few blocks and set it up in the little plastic frame.  Tonight, this is how I will be slow stitching Take 21 because I really DO DESERVE a loooooooooong session of slow stitching.  Mind you, I'll be sitting on a straight chair! :D

Hope your day was better than mine :)

Until next time...

;^)  as crying never fixed anything anyway!

Linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching.