QMQ Butterfly Block Tutorial

A big thank you to Jolene over at Blue Elephant Stitches for giving me permission to put together this little tutorial!

Today I'm going to show you how I used Blue Elephant Stitches Granny Square Quilt Block tutorial to make a butterfly block. 

For the purpose of this tutorial, I am using 1/4" seams.

FABRIC REQUIREMENTS:

• 11 - 2" (inch) squares of the "butterfly wings."  For a true butterfly look I would recommend having 5 (five) matching pairs of fabric, with one fabric for the center of the wings. 
• 14 - 2" (inch) squares of the solid (I used white in this tutorial)
• 1, 1" x 5" strip of the solid (again, I used white).  Cut in half.
• 1, 1" x 5" +/-  of gray or black fabric (depending on how long you like your "butterfly body," I used 4.5", but wanted to give you the option of a longer look).  We'll be adding the solid to each end of the block, so you'll lose roughly 1/2" on the length.

DIRECTIONS

If you've used Jolene's tutorial before, you'll notice you have two extra white squares.  Layout your fabrics similar to the below picture to form the butterfly wings.

For the first part of the tutorial I'll direct you over to Blue Elephant Stitches. Please note for this tutorial I used 2" squares in lieu of the 2-1/2" squares in the tutorial (what can I say, I had a LOT of 2" strip scraps).

Follow the directions to complete the full block, including the trimming (if you so desire, the next part does not require the block to be trimmed, it's just how I did it).

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Next rotate the block similar to the below picture.  Use scissors, or rotary cutter, to cut block in half.

Next take your strip of gray (determine if 5" - minus the 1/2" from the seams - is a good length or if you would prefer something shorter) and sew one of the 1" wide solid strips to each end of the gray strip.  Iron seams open if you wish.

It's ok if the white fabric goes beyond the footprint of the butterfly block.  You could trim it now or later depending on your preference.  I chose to wait until the body was sewn to the wings so that I could adjust the position of the body

Take one of the butterfly (or one wing!) halves and line up the body of the butterfly so that it is centered with the wing.  Pin in place and sew.  Press seams.  Repeat with the other butterfly half.  Press open.  Trim / square block as preferred.

And there you go, a pretty cute butterfly block, if I do say so myself :)

As a little end note, several butterfly blocks recommend stitching "antenna," but I'm still working on my stitching skills so I opted to not add any to my block.

If you have any questions or need me to clarify anything, please shoot me an email at quartermilequilts@gmail.com  I am new to writing tutorials and would appreciate the feedback!

And again, thanks to Blue Elephant Stitches for allowing me to write this tutorial!