As far as design goes… the appliquéd butterflies were inspired by butterflies in two of the fabrics featured in the quilt. On a sheet of plain white paper, I sketched the butterfly until I got a version I was pleased with. Then I imported it into EQ6 and resized it to fit a 12” block. Using the “freehand” and “Bezier curve” tools I traced my sketch. After tinkering with the shapes a bit a finished appliqué butterfly block emerged.

I imported all of the fabric swatches that were possibilities for the quilt (I did not use them all) and created several different block colorways.

Now I had a block, so the layout work began. How many blocks? Sashing? Borders? EQ6 makes it so easy to play with all of these design options. Typically I become overwhelmed somewhere in the design process and have to put the project aside and let it “marinate”. The version I had originally planned to make had another scalloped border, but once I began the actual quit construction, I realized it was one border too many. The border corner teardrop shapes are smaller versions of the butterfly wing teardrop layer. It was quick and easy to resize the teardrop, move it, rotate it, copy and flip it, and make a cute little block that repeated shapes from the main design.