In their defense, they know me well, and large quilts usually do NOT get quilted.  OR if I quilt them, they get folded and stuck in the closet waiting to be gifted.

This size stands a chance of both getting quilted and getting used as a snuggle under couch quilt.  (It will most likely get gifted at some point in the future too)

Typically when I do a border appliqué I do the work before I sew the borders on.  For this quilt the appliqué was an after thought so I had to improvise.

The top is large enough that I didn’t want to have to manipulate it sewing around the individual pieces in the butterflies.  My solutions was to make patches by sewing the butterflies to black and then stitching to the border.

The butterflies intended for my outer border are either going to get stitched up and used as patches for other projects OR centered on a light background and become setting blocks for another scrappy project..

  One advantage to using the patches on this project is I could move them around before I sewed them to the border.  Once I found a layout I liked I just did an echo stitch to secure the piece and then cut the excess fabric back.  The photo above shows before the trimming up.

I don’t know what is getting quilted on this top but I bet it is done in either black or variegated threads.  Top size is 74 x74.