The Pink Square

The focus of this quilt comes right off the focus fabric – colorful butterflies. Between pieced and appliqued blocks are bright patches of prints...and one pink square. The maker of this piece asked me to quilt a butterfly into that 6 inch pink square.

Okay, so how do we do that? I started out with a sketch I made, inspired by one in Judi Madsen's book “Quilting Wide Open Spaces.” Then, I traced it onto vellum paper. The paper is slightly transparent, so I only drew one-half of the butterfly, and then flipped the vellum to trace the other half. Whee! Instant symmetry!

Then I go to my DSM, and remove the thread and the bobbin. I set my machine for a rather long stitch length, because the design is relatively simple. More detail would require a short stitch length. Now, stitch through the paper on all the lines. When you are ready to use this as a stencil, make sure to turn the vellum over. Now, the little “bursts” from the needle holes are on the top, and they will “tickle” the chalk dust out of the Pounce Pad.

By the way, you do not “pounce” a Pounce Pad. Rather, you brush the pad across the stencil. How many times you need to brush over the stencil will depend upon how well you can see the dots. This pink fabric should take minimal brushing.

Oh, but the pattern did not show well in the photo, so I took my trusty school chalk and played Dot-to-Dot! Now, I have something that is super easy to remove with a moist scrap of fabric, and super easy to see.