Wanabee Quiltin

I bought 8 of these vintage butterfly blocks about 7 or 8 years ago. Now I am cleaning out my stuff and want to put it together in a small lap quilt but I am thinking it's not done yet. My DH and I have looked at it and have no clue how to finish it with embroidery. These blocks are all sewed on natural cotton and are about 17 inches square. Each background fabric is just beautiful, but the shape and everything else is not so great. I will welcome any ideas please on how to finish this block. Thanks so much.

Terri D.

Quite unique! I would bring all the blocks to the same size by adding a narrow, matching colored sashing to the outside of each one or by adding triangles to each side to make a square-in-a-square (or in this case, it might be a rectangle?). Whatever you decide, it will be very pretty finished.

WTxRed

Cute blocks - you could give this a bit of a modern twist and put a couple of wonky shaped borders on each with some fabrics that capture all the colors. Could we see pictures please of some of the other blocks? Doing this would certainly enlarge your blocks, I'd probably go close to 24" total on each - that would be roughly 3-1/2" on each side, but cut them wonky. You could mock up one more block and put in the center - 3 x 3. This would end up giving you roughly a 72 x 72 quilt. Will be fun to see what you come up with!

Auntie V

Is this a bat or a butterfly? I think the blocks need something extra in the wing area like another shape or more lines. For the feelers I would add some small black buttons.

dunster

I think it's finished if you want it to be, but you could certainly add embroidery or embellishment if you would like to do so. Depending on how the blocks measure out, you might be able to just square them up and then put together with sashing. Or you might want to do as Terri and WTxRed suggested and add borders before putting them together.

ckcowl

the shape is probably 'off' a bit because the blocks have not been squared up yet after the embroidery/applique was done- if you would like to embellish them a little more you could embroider antenna onto the butterfly- or what ever other embellishment- then just give them a good press & square them up so they are all square & equal in size.

nativetexan

Looks like the antenna's are already there. different looking but nice.

QuiltE

If it were me, I think I would not add any embellishments to the blocks ... the new would show as just that.

What I would do would be to square it up, and add sashings, as I wanted with coordinating fabric(s) or alternate with coordinating print blocks. When it came to quilting, that's where I would add any extra detail wanted on the butterfly ... such as quilting lines from the body out to the scalloped wing edge and perhaps across the body or a u-shape thru the length of the body.

Now you have me curious ... are all 8 the same fabric? Or do you have an assortment of colours/fabrics?

What a treasure you will have ... and fun to finish it off.
Now if only you knew the story behind the blocks, and who made them!

earthwalker

Just needs a few lines of embroidery in the wing area to bring it to life, square up, add some sashing and you are good to go. Very pretty.

Carrie in PA

I've never seen anything like that. I would be tempted to stitch details into the wings and body. Such a great find.