The Magic of Quilting: Tessilating Butterflies- and How!

Tessilating Butterflies Blocks Jan. 17, 2015

As I may have already mentioned, these are rather tricky blocks to complete. They do look really cute once their done, though.

Sewing curves takes a lot of patience. It's not difficult once you get on to it, but it takes a great deal of concentration and it's very time consuming.

Each butterfly block is made up of 9 curved pieces. The first time I tried these blocks, I cut out enough pieces to make12 blocks for a baby quilt for my new infant grand daughter. Then when I went to sew the pieces into blocks, I realized that, YIKE, I didn't know where to start! I had never sewn a curve before, let along pieces that had both concave and convex curves!

I looked online and found a great video that demonstrated it very well. (See bottom of post for link.)

My tweezers became my new favourite tool. :)

At the time, I had said I was never going to make these tricky, time-consuming blocks again, but here I am, 2 years later making 30 curved butterfly blocks this time! (Sucker for punishment, I guess… :/ )

Tip: Before you start sewing the pieces together, make 1/8 inch cuts around the edges of the curves, especially the concave (inward) curves.

2 pieces that need to be sewn together, with both concave and convex curves

Flip the 2 pieces right sides together just like you would to sew square or rectangular pieces. Pin the edge where you want to start. Some sites say to pin the start, the middle and the end of the pieces. In this case, because of the changing curves, I found that didn't work very well.

Put your presser foot down and stitch 2 or 3 stitches. Lift presser foot; Move your top fabric edge over to match the bottom fabric edge close to the needle; Then stitch 2 or 3 more stitches. Repeat...

I use my tweezers to help me grip the top fabric and slowly move it to match the bottom edge as I'm sewing whenever possible.

Keep moving the top fabric edge over to line it up with your bottom fabric edge after every few stitches.

Press seam open and you are done!

Putting the body in between the wings was the tricky part especially the last edge.

Sewing curves tutorial

http://www.shecanquilt.ca/2011/12/sewing-curves-is-not-hard-seriously.html

Connecting Threads-Sewing Curves Tutorial (Scroll to the bottom of the blog for a good video)
http://www.connectingthreads.com/tutorials/Curved_Piecing__D82.html

The 30 (plus) butterfly blocks will be sewn into a new "big girl" quilt for my little grand daughter C who just turned 3 and is now in her "big girl" toddler bed.