#11 Butterflies in the Garden

#11: Butterflies in the Garden
Finished: 3/18/12
Techniques: Landscape quilt, raw-edge appliqué, ombre fabric, free-motion quilting, pieced binding.
Size: 15 3/4 x 19"

Description: I've always been fascinated by landscape quilts and thought I would try one as a mini-quilt.  I started with an ombre fabric which did very well for the background. The colors shifted from blue and white to green, yellow and orange. The blue and white did well for the sky and although most of the other colors were covered by the appliqué, some of them peek through as ground cover. I had one 3" wide strip of tomato fabric which I cut and used in the foreground, hoping to give a feeling of depth. The butterflies were cut from fabric and I included about a 1/16" of surrounding beige fabric. It works well because it helps each butterfly stand out but still appears to be a part of the butterfly itself.

I used invisible thread for the free-motion quilting and I'm particularly happy with the quilting in the sky, which is done in a loopy meandering style to represent the flight of the butterflies.

I also pieced the binding so it wouldn't detract from the landscape. At first I was going to use the sunflower fabric in the lower half, but the dark green separating the sunflowers proved much too dark. I found a batik with green, blue, red and purple colors that was much more subtle and seemed to do the trick because of the way it simulated flowers and grass. The backing was more of the sunflower fabric.