Saturday, February 4, 2017

RSC butterfly - aquamarine

This months color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is teal/aquamarine, what Angela called "anything between blue and green".  Here's my butterfly for the month, plus the four bonus HST leftover from construction.  By the end of the year I think I'll have enough of these bonus units to make a scrappy pillow to go with my scrappy quilt!

Aquamarine butterfly quilt block
February butterfly block and bonus HST

Since I'm only planning on making one butterfly block each month, I decided to play a little bit more with each block.  The basic shape is the same, but I'm going to try to come up with different designs inside the wings.

Last month I had a lot of squares, so I made the base rectangles for the large wings from a grid of squares.  This month I started with more strips and strings.


The strings were great for the smaller wings again, though I sewed them diagonally across the base rectangle this time. 

String block base for small wings

I pondered the strips for a little bit, then decided to make strip sets and cut them diagonally into strips to get parallelograms.  I shifted the strips a bit, sewed them back together, and cut my rectangles for the large wing bases out of the wonky pieces that resulted.  I don't have a picture of this because I meant to take pictures as I made the second wing, after I figured out what I was doing with the first one.  However, it then occurred to me to make the wings mirror images of each other, and I had some difficulty wrapping my mind around how to make the mirror image happen.  It involved a lot of seam ripping (but no grumbling, because this was playtime).  My mind was busy enough sorting this out that there wasn't any room for the thought "Take some pictures", so I don't have any.

I really do like how it turned out. Here are January and February's block together, waiting for next month's color to join them.


Though I missed pictures of the wing base construction, I have pictures of the basic butterfly construction, so I will have a tutorial for you by next Saturday's RSC linky party.  I hope you'll come back for it!

Linking up with Scraphappy Saturday at SoScrappy

25 comments:

  1. Wow, you are good! I love the way you are creating designs within the wings. These two colors just harmonize so well together. I know there will be a new color added each month, but my heart beat just a little faster seeing these two together.

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  2. Another interesting set of butterfly wings!! You used a nice selection of SEA GREEN scraps.

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  3. Another beautiful butterfly. I like how the wing patterns aren't the same. Your finished quilt will be spectacular.

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  4. That looks terrific! What a great idea to play with the design in the wings. I'm going to struggle with the aqua as I really don't have any scraps in that colour way.

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  5. A great monthly challenge for yourself to design new wings. It turned out beautifully and I never would have noticed they were strip pieced if you had not explained. You are so right, ripping is not bad when you are in the midst of creating. That's the fun part.

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  6. These are super cute blocks. I love them!

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  7. This is going to be such a fun quilt to watch coming together-for both of us!

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  8. I like this one even better than the purple one! And am glad to hear I'm not the only one who gets so wrapped up in the creative process I forget to take photos!

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  9. What a fun variation on the same basic pattern. All those design choices are going to give the finished quilt a lot of visual interest. Looking forward to seeing the variations you can come up with

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  10. Those are so cute! It will make an adorable quilt with all the different colors.

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  11. This is the most beautiful butterfly quilt block I've seen so far. Awesome!! Keeping the bonus HSTs for a pillow is a fantastic idea. ;^)

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  12. Fabulous idea to make each butterfly a little different with the piecing! They will seem like different species that way. :)

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  13. The butterflies are amazing and they will make a beautiful quilt! I love to watch you play with fabric and design.

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  14. Your butterflies are gorgeous! Love those colours!

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  15. Your butterflies are great! I love the way you've made each one unique!

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  16. So fun! I love how each one is turning out and that you are enjoying the process.

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  17. Beautiful butterflies Joanne! I love your idea to change them up within their wings, and it's so good to see the two together; really shows the difference!

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  18. Lovely butterflies! The variations in the wings are perfect!

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  19. I love how you are giving each butterfly it's own identity by changing up the patterns in the wings. This will definitely be a beautiful and fun quilt when it is all together.

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  20. I just love your butterfly pattern, and your fabric choices for each. I see another beautiful quilt on the horizon.

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  21. Those butterflies are very pretty. So much temptation - so little time!!!

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  22. Your two butterflies are looking beautiful - this will be a lovely quilt :-) Cool how you are playing with different options for the wings - I look forward to seeing what you come up with next!

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