The Butterfly Challenge

I love challenges and dares, you tell me I can't do something and I will go out and do it, I dare you.
The Butterfly Challenge - Show me your interpretation of the block. Make it as unique as you can.You can alter the pattern (from The Tartan Kiwi blog).
I accept the Challenge!

When I first started sewing 2 years ago, there was a Paper Pieced Challenge, and I couldn't understand how people were getting those tiny little pieces of fabric wrapped around the odd shaped small pieces of paper.

5 Pence, the size of a dime, larger than that little triangle of fabric.

So I give you my English Paper Pieced and my Foundation Paper Pieced Butterfly an ode to my fist days sewing and not understanding the difference between the two.  First I made my lovely hexagons the English Paper Pieced way, I love this kind of sewing it allows me to be outside while the kids play and is easy to put down and pick up again.

 

The flowery hexies are Liberty of London, then I surrounded them with "Indelible" by Katarina Roccella for Art Gallery Fabrics, I didn't want to cut my Liberty hexies to much.  This is for the top two wings, the bottom wings were done the Foundation paper pieced method of sewing through paper, for the bottom wings I used some Kona solids mixed with the "Indelible" collection.
To make the project unique, I turned the butterfly into a dress for my daughter (hoping to get bonus points from Juliet's 5 year old daughter Rascal, maybe she will be like, hey mom make me one of those)

Everyone in the family likes it.

Yes, that is my son wearing the dress, hey, he wanted too :)

Creating this, I had many first.

1. Mixing EPP with FPP (need help with those terms, write me;)
2. Designing my own dress pattern
3. Using French seams to finish the whole dress.
4. Sewing with Voile (will be buying more of this, it is lovely!)

This project has kept me busy the last weeks, so happy it is finished, P.S. you might notice the bottom is not hemmed, I used the selvage for the hems, to help with that, but also my daughter won't let me turn them up, in fact she doesn't want to take it off.  I had to take it off of her last night so she wouldn't go outside to play in it, at lunch she came back with mud all over her shorts, so there was no way I was letting her out of the house in this brand new made dress.  So then she decided to play inside.

Yes, I was cringing as she rolled around the floor, after she was done twirling.
Linking to the Butterfly Challenge
 and New to Me in August

don't forget to enter my Giveaway.

Show me your interpretation of the block. Make it as unique as you can.You can alter the pattern - See more at: http://www.thetartankiwi.com/search/label/butterfly%20challenge#sthash.O5Diafgi.dpuf

Show me your interpretation of the block. Make it as unique as you can.You can alter the pattern - See more at: http://www.thetartankiwi.com/search/label/butterfly%20challenge#sthash.O5Diafgi.dpuf

Show me your interpretation of the block. Make it as unique as you can.You can alter the pattern - See more at: http://www.thetartankiwi.com/search/label/butterfly%20challenge#sthash.O5Diafgi.dpuf

Show me your interpretation of the block. Make it as unique as you can.You can alter the pattern - See more at: http://www.thetartankiwi.com/search/label/butterfly%20challenge#sthash.O5Diafgi.dpuf

February Finishes

Monthly finishes:

1.        Every month I plan on following along with  

The "Classic meets Modern QAL"  this month is the Amethyst block.

2.       Every month I plan on making a block for the

 Aurifil Designer of the Month   Amy Gibson's block.

                 Loving my Kona box and all of it's deliciousness! 
3.       Every month I plan on making something from a

 Craft book Sew Along.  Started on this in January but I still need a certain embroidery thread color.
I made a hoop wall art based kind of off of a pattern that is in the book "Hoop-La", this will be a Christmas present for my niece and I will also be linking it to this linky party over at Sew Cal Gal. and also

More photos available on Flickr

The cool thing is I entered this in the Sew Mama Sew Little Gifts of Love Challenge and I WON 2 books, so excited about having some more books to look at and create things for the Craft Book Sew Along.

4.       Every month I plan on meeting the challenge over 

at Le Challenge. Finished that you can see it below, March's challenge is "Order"

Specific February Goals:

I need to finish 2 swaps this month, one is a wall quilt Finished! and the other a tote (working on it).
Here's my mini quilt that was what I also entered in the  Challenge at Le Challenge "Rising Sun"

You can find more pictures here.

My most important goal for this month was a new body for this little baby doll

This is TukTuk, 1 of 4 dolls with that name, her arm fell off and she has a whole in the butt and her head is about ready to fall out too.  So I thought she should get a new body, I have already sewn her neck and crotch together a few times.  It should be fun, I am thinking of making the body look like it already has clothes on, because my daughter has the tendency to take the clothes off of all of her dolls.

This was so hard, you would think that such small pieces would be easy, but I did my first curve seam.

Then I had to figure out how to keep the arms, legs and head on, originally they were on with zip ties (I think that is what they are called) but I had to cut them off, so instead I had to tighten it with embroidery thread, I hope it will stay and that it works.

The leg ties are hidden inside but the arm ties are outside and the head one looks like the back of a bathing suit tied at the neck.

Skip to the bottom if you want to leave a message, the rest is heavy picture uploading :)

A headless doll kinda scary, wink.

Little hands helping stuff her baby, ps, "babies don't have boobies, mommy"

Very happy little girl!

TukTuk was feeling so good she decided to go out shopping and came back with a package all the way from New Zealand!

 A New Zealand pin, 6 FQ's (will share on Sunday Stash) a notecard and

some special ONLY FROM New Zealand candies!
I would say that was a great first day out on the town for little dolly.
Thanks to Jenny over at Jen's Crafts and Quilts in New Zealand and her 100th blogpost giveaway!

Linking to A Lovely Year of Finishes, 
and also to New to Me February Linky Party - for my curved seam and for making a doll's body (harder than you think, I need to win a book on how to do it, phew) and the first time doing Y-seams, the Amethyst block above, if you would like to make this block, Erin has great directions
And Linking to A Stitch in Time for the baby doll