QM Scrap Squad: Mel’s Old Glory Rendition

The QM Scrap Squad is a select group of seven QM readers. They take one pattern from each regular issue of Quiltmaker and make their own scrappy versions to inspire you.

Today we’re kicking off a new Scrap Squad project. We used Old Glory from the July/August issue of Quiltmaker. Old Glory was designed and made by Margie Ullery of Ribbon Candy Quilt Company.

Old Glory, Quiltmaker July/August '12. Designed and made by Margie Ullery.

We decided it would be fun to ask the Scrap Squad to sprinkle alternate shapes across their quilts. I think you’ll like their ideas.

Today’s project is by Melissa Radtke from Dubuque, Iowa. You’ll hear from Mel in her own words below.

Melissa Radtke from Dubuque, Iowa

How many times do you run across a quilt pattern that is just plain fun and easy? Not as often as you would like, right? Well, Old Glory is both.

My mind went racing on how many fun things could happen with this pattern. First I was thinking of leaves, and I had always wanted to try shadow quilting, but I needed a LOT of practice, so I decided that idea #2 would be my choice…butterflies and really bright colors. So into my stash I went hunting.

I liked the diagonal stars in Old Glory and wanted to accentuate that. After some consideration, I added black patches in each of the strips to make the diagonal stand out. This also gave me the opportunity to make the quilt even scrappier.

Black spacer blocks

You can see there are different colored strips on either side of the each black spacer patch. This approach really uses up the scraps! Since my widest strip was 3 1/2 inches, I decided that I would make all my black spacers 3 1/2 inches wide.

Butterflies fussy cut from Laurel Burch fabric

Laurel Burch fabrics are a personal favorite of mine. I love, love, love the bright colors. When I ran across this butterfly fabric I knew it would be perfect. There are a variety of butterfly sizes and I really wanted some of the smaller and the larger ones as a focal point. One night I sat and cut out butterflies while watching TV.

I used Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 for my appliques. I really did want anything too heavy—I didn’t want the butterflies to be too stiff. The Lite seemed to work well, and since the temporary adhesive is double sided, I was able to audition the butterfly placement before ironing them on.

It’s really nice to be able to toss ideas around with other quilters. That’s the really great thing about working with the talented women on Scrap Squad.

When it came time to attach my butterflies to my quilt top, Bonnie Stapleton threw an idea my way. She had seen butterflies that had a 3-D look. They were backed with the same fabric and then just their bodies were attached to the quilt.

What a great idea! I decided I would give it a shot. Unfortunately my butterflies were not symmetrical, so I couldn’t use the same fabric on the backside.  But why not just use a contrasting fabric for their backs?

Butterfly back

Butterfly front

Here’s how I made them. I used Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 on the butterfly back.  Since I wanted a little bit of body to the butterfly once it was attached to the quilt, I used fusible fleece on the butterfly front.  I peeled the backside of the Steam-a-Seam off and positioned it over the fusible fleece portion of the butterfly front. I followed the instructions to iron them together and used a satin stitch to finish the raw edge.

Satin stitch edge of 3D butterflies

Satin stitch settings

Satin stitching the edges just wasn’t enough for my butterflies. I gave them more definition by outlining parts of the wings with metallic thread.

Outlining parts of the wings

I was still in the experimental stage of my butterflies. I thought before attaching them to my quilt, I had better do a test to make sure I would get the 3-D look I was after. Here’s my test—see if you think the wings seem to lift off the fabric.

Just by sewing down the body outline, it seemed to make the wings lift up a bit. Hold your cards…we have a bingo!! Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

I used three of the large butterflies this way on my quilt. Coming from a floral design background, we learned to work in odd numbers.  So I used three of the 3-D and two of the large butterflies (not 3D). This seemed to make the 3-D butterflies even more important.

I hope by now your curiosity has been tweaked and you really want to see how my “Butterfly Glory” turned out.  Here she is…

Can you see the 3-D butterflies? So much fun!!!

For quilting my Butterfly Glory, I chose meandering with quilted butterflies.

Meandering with butterflies

So that’s it for my third Scrap Squad quilt and Butterfly Glory. Have some fun with this one and go wild. The possibilities are endless!