Jay’s Butterfly Quilt - 2020

This quilt was a wonderful collaboration with my daughter Kate. It was made for her previous boss as a surprise retirement gift. 60 of his friends and previous coworkers contributed fabrics. There were many design challenges and our creative minds got an exhilarating workout!

We started with a foundation pieced butterfly pattern (see link). We then changed the piecing to crazy patch to show off some of the larger print fabrics. The four large butterflies were foundation pieced. The smaller butterflies are three dimensional — two are hand embroidered and the smallest ones were fused, raw edge. If I’d gone fabric shopping, I likely would not have chosen all of these fabrics, but it all worked!

Kate is a professional artist, so her layout ideas were not traditional. We did originally plan to have the butterfly blocks set horizontally, but when we tilted one on the design wall, the quilt came alive. There was no turning back.

I did most of the piecing and all of the quilting. When it was finished, Kate applied (a million?) crystals.