Baby Butterfly Quilt

One of my girlfriends just had a baby, so I wanted to give her something nice.

I ended up making this quick pieced quilt on my machine.  I had some trouble with the backing shifting and tucking(I guess you learn something new every project), but other than that I think it turned out OK.

Here's the list of stuff you need:

• 1/2 yard each of three coordinating block fabrics (you can actually get away with 1/4 yard each, or make two blankets.  I do it this way to make it easier to strip-piece the quilt together.) Give each of these fabrics a label.  One fabric is the "A" fabric, one fabric is the "B" fabric, and the third fabric is the "C" fabric.
• 1 yard of fabric for the strips and border
• 2 yards of flannel for the backing
• 1 crib-sized piece of quilt batting
• matching thread and quilt binding (if you're lazy like me - two 3-yard packages of binding did the trick)

OK.  You want to pre-wash everything in hot water and hot tumble cycle.  Hopefully you get it out of the dryer before wrinkles set.  Then you want to cut the block fabrics and the border fabric into 5" strips.  You should have enough for three strips of the block fabrics and seven strips for the border fabric.

Then you want to sew the block strips together.  One set will be A, B, C.  Another set will be B, C, A and the last set will be C, A, B.  Press.  Then cut these strips into 5" sections, so that you have sets of 3 5" blocks sewn together.

Take three of the A, B, C sets and sew them together end-to-end, so that you have a strip of blocks that are A, B, C, A, B, C, A, B, C.  Press.  Repeat with the B, C, A and the C, A, B sets.  Then make one more strip of A, B, C sets.  So you have four strips of nine blocks total.  Press!

OK!  You're almost done.  Now alternate the border strips with the block strips.  So you'll have a strip of border fabric, then the A strip, then another strip of border fabric, then the B strip.  Etc.  Press and then add the last two border strips on top and bottom.

To cut and piece this whole thing together took around 3 hours one afternoon, and that included time when I goofed up piecing together one of the block strips and had to undo the whole seam.

Sandwich your quilt top, batting and backing and quilt!  Then bind with the quilt binding.  You're done!  Sorry I don't have a finished photo, when I make the 2nd quilt (from the leftover strips) I'll post one.