Construction begins

It begins with templates - a LOT of templates. I drafted lots of flowers, butterflies and hearts in varying sizes on paper and then made cardboard templates of each one.

I also made a number of photocopies of the shapes which I roughly cut out and used to help with placement of them on the quilt.

While I could have simply ironed the fabric to the fusible webbing for most of the shapes without first having an idea where they'd wind up in the quilt, I found it was really important to plan carefully with the caterpillar and surrounding flowers, particularly since they had to fit in a tighter formation and because I would have stitching connecting all the flowers and leaves.

I pinned all my paper shapes in place and then hung the quilt front from my curtain tracks to create an oversized design board.

I traced all the shapes in reverse onto the paper side of fusible webbing and roughly cut them out outside the lines. Next I used my cardboard templates so that I could visualise how the final shape would look, in particular the butterflies and flowers, before ironing the fusible webbing in place.

As I each fabric was selected, fused and fussy cut, it was pinned in place on the quilt front so that I could step back and look at the quilt from a distance to check that the colours weren't bunched or if this area needed more pink or purple to balance things. It was only after all the pieces were in place that they were ironed on.