Hey Everyone, welcome back to Free Motion Friday.

Last week on Cool Tool Thursday I dug into my kitchen cupboards and came out with some cookie cutters that could be used as quilting motifs.

I chose the butterfly cookie cutter to create a free motion quilting design.

To start, I traced around the butterfly 4 times on a piece of fabric making sure each was oriented just slightly different on the fabric as I didn’t want my butterflies to all be straight and up and down for this piece. I used the Sewline Fabric Pencil to trace around the cookie cutter.

Motif traced on fabric

I started in a corner making some meandering swirls as I stitched towards the first butterfly. The swirls make it look like they are flying around. Starting at the corner of the butterfly I just stitched my way around the motif until I came back to where I started and then continued on with more meandering swirls over to the next butterfly.

Arrows indicate direction of stitching

Then I thought what if I echo the butterfly? I drew another set of lines inside the butterflies.

Design drawn within the butterfly

Then I stitched each motif with a different colour of thread. Looks pretty good.

Echoed design stitched in orange

This motif could be repeated in a border or used in large open areas.

What if I had wanted a single large butterfly and wanted to add some markings in the wings – tune in next week to find out how to enlarge and stylize the butterfly.

Happy Quilting!

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