Fly Up, Fly Down

I've got an un-seasonal finish to share with you today. A wall quilt about 30'' squared called "Fly up, fly down".

If anybody visits this blog regularly, they would know that curve piecing has been my big obsession for quite a long time now. I find that curves add a lot of interest to the predominantly straight-line genre of quilting. My previous curve-pieced quilts are more like "pictures", images that are their own thing. What I wanted to do in this case was to design a really simple curve-pieced block, which could work on its own as well as in combination with any traditional or modern blocks.

The butterfly block consists of two squares, so it can work in a grid, and and each square is made of six parts with curved seams, the curves being very gentle and much easier to sew than the traditional drunkard's path block, for example.

I wanted to make a couple of blocks to try it out and couldn't stop until I had 8! In this case the idea was co combine curve piecing technique with the modern quilt aesthetic, so I chose blenders and a neutral background (it would be more modern to use solids, but I just don't have any :))) Then I played with the layout options:

Decided on the last one.

I chose to quilt the butterflies with a custom wing pattern and the background with irregularly spaced vertical lines. I made a freezer paper "mask" to mark the butterflies:

The butterflies were quilted with variegated threads in shades of purple and yellow/brown correspondingly, and I like how different fragments of the thread show on different butterflies.

I like how this quilt turned out, although it's very different from what I've done before (sometimes I feel like I can say that about almost every one of my quilts - I really love experimenting). I hope it has that "modern" feel about it.

While working with this block I had so many ideas about other uses for it - for one thing it would be great to showcase some beautiful prints or hand-dyed fabrics, for another, I'd like to combine it with other blocks, then I though about enlarging it and "cutting" it with more curved seams to create various wing designs...

I'm wondering if anyone would like to try out this block. I could make it a free pdf download if somebody is interested.

Linking up to Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River
Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story
Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts
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