Charming Butterfly Blocks

I have been seeing a lot of butterfly blocks popping up on the internet.  They are simple to make and don’t require much accuracy to get great results.  I kept thinking though that they would be a great way to use some charm packs.  Charm packs are 5 inch square samples of fabrics.  I had to refigure the measurements though to make it work and this is what I came up with:

Wings:  Cut the charm square in half

Background:  Cut 1 1/2” Strips from a charm square or 1 1/2” X 5” from a background fabric

Body:  Cut 1” X 5” strips I used a brown fabric all the same for each butterfly.

• Mark the wings at 3/4” from the top for the section near the body and 1/4” from the top.  This is where you will put the background strip to sew.  Lay the background strip on the wing and sew 1/4” from edge.  Be sure you have extra fabric hanging over each end for full coverage.
• Fold background fabric back and iron in place.
• Square up the wings to 2 1/2” X 5” .  I turned the piece upside down to square it up and I didn’t cut the extra backing off because it was so small and it helped with the squaring up.
• 
• Sew wings to body and iron towards the body. 

Voila!  a 5” Butterfly block ~ Charming!   I sewed 4 together and it made a 9 1/2” block.  Not sure what I will do with this but, I have lots more charm squares to play with and see what happens…

Be sure to check out what some other bloggers are saying about this fun block:

Pam Kitty Morning  - She made it even smaller than mine

Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts – She posted a tutorial on this that might be easier to understand than what I just did.

Choccybangles  - summer project

and I’m sure there are some I missed and more to come!

Let’s see some more beautiful butterflies flitting around out there in blogland of all sizes.

Ferne