Tula Pink Butterfly Quilt

I finished this quilt last night; I stayed up until past 1am assembling the last sections of it, and of course when I woke up in the morning it was pouring (flood warnings), so of course it was impossible to take proper photos!

This is Tula Pink’s ‘Butterfly’ quilt; you can see a photo of the original quilt below, which I took at Quilt Market. Tula’s quilt was made with her new fabric line, ‘Acacia’, which is due out in September. I was honored to test this pattern, which will be available as a paper pattern, but unfortunately the pattern won’t be available until early August. 🙁  But I hope you don’t mind me sharing this quilt with you now; I spent countless hours on it and I was really excited to finish it.

This quilt has a back story, which will make it an important quilt to me and my family for a long time. This quilt is for my daughter’s 5th birthday, which is in September. This is the first quilt that I have made for her.

Of course, Tula designed the quilt pattern. I decided to use purple and pink solids, which I purchased from Pink Castle Fabrics and Fat Quarter Shop. Most of the solids are Michael Miller Couture Cotton, which I used for the first time and really love, and I used some Kona to fill in some additional colors. I decided that I wanted to use a pink text on white background fabric, but upon google searching, I did not see anything available (but lots of white text on pink background!).

My friend Thomas kindly offered to help design a text fabric for me so that I could put it up on Spoonflower and get it printed. The words comprising the fabric are a short letter that I wrote to my daughter, so my text fabric has a lot of meaning for me. I printed 3 yards the first go-round, and when the fabric came it was *huge* – in my rush, I had neglected to size it down. I was very upset at the wasted fabric, as I had to order an additional 3 yards. It turned out okay in the end, as I used the first bit of yardage as borders for the quilt (the top and bottom).

The finished quilt top is now on its way to longarm genius Lisa Sipes. Lisa has some big changes going on in her life right now, but she is amazing and when she heard that the top was going to be finished now, she told me to send the quilt on over! It will be quilted to white cotton sateen backing, using Pellon polyester batting.

I am really a bit overwhelmed that so many friends had a ‘hand’ in making this quilt! It will be very special for sure!

Prepping the fabric for each set of blocks

Okay, so after all that mushy stuff, let’s get down and talk about the process of making this quilt! If you’re participating in the City Sampler Sew Along, the style of many of the blocks are similar to things you would be making for that quilt: crosses, flying geese, log cabins, etc. There is also the addition of some curved blocks, which the City Sampler book does not have. I would say the Butterfly quilt pattern is an advanced beginner/intermediate quilt; I’m leaning more toward intermediate because of the curved blocks and just the sheer amount of cutting and blocks needed.

I cut out all my blocks and placed them in ziplock baggies before beginning. I thought that this would save me some time going back and forth after every set of blocks. The blocks are assembled in sets (for example, 8 log cabins). Some of the blocks I made all the same (I made all of my small crosses with pink on pink fabric, for example), and some I broke up in sets (i.e. 8 blocks, 2 blocks each of the different color combos I had decided on for those blocks). Breaking up the blocks into different sets of colors definitely took more cutting time, but I think the results were worth it. Since butterflies are symmetrical, this quilt had a left half and a right half, and I think it was important to have the blocks in sets so that there was a matching block on the left and the right half, if that makes sense.

This is Section 1, for the right half of the quilt

The pattern is over 20 pages of instructions, and the templates are included for the curved blocks. The cutting instructions are similar to the City Sampler blocks (each block instruction tells you how many pieces to cut and at what size), with many diagrams showing you how to assemble the blocks. Everything was very clearly illustrated, with succinct instructions, so I had no trouble putting my blocks together. The next portion of the instructions was for piecing the blocks in sections. There were 9 sections laid out in the pattern, with a left half and a right half for each section. I think it took me just as long to piece all the blocks, as it did to sew all the sections together. This is not a quick sew, but I put my nose to the grindstone. The quilt took me approximately a week to make (and I subtracted the days that I spent waiting around for fabric to arrive).

Half of the quilt up on the wall…I was so excited to get to this point and see some progress!

My daughter saw me working on the quilt and did not like the pink text fabric. She said, “Can’t you take the writing fabric away and put a horse fabric there instead?” Normally if I was making something for my children I would let them choose fabric and tell me how they wanted the item sewn, but in this case, I was like…”Umm, sorry cutie.” If she doesn’t want it I will certainly keep it for myself (until she is older and *does* want it, lol!!).

So I hate to torture you with a pattern that is not available yet, but the Butterfly pattern is pretty amazing! I don’t make quilts very often, but when I do I feel like it has to be something killer. Look for this pattern to come out in a little over a month (and you know i heart tula pink always has the newest Tula stuff first!!).