Butterfly Applique Wall Hanging

I am SO glad I can finally share some of the holiday gifts I made over the last two months. You wouldn't know it from the blog posts, bus since November I've really been doing a ton of sewing. I just couldn't share anything for fear of recipients seeing their gifts early. But they've all been given now, so I am free to post about all of them!

First up is the wall hanging I made for my mother in law. She really likes butterflies, so I wanted to make her something that incorporated butterfly fabric. But, I had a hard time finding any butterfly fabrics that I thought would appeal to her (there are lots of cute options for babies, though).

Eventually I settled on making butterfly appliques. The appliques I used came from Lollychops, which has a printout of them available for free. There are a few different styles, and if you wanted to get really clever you could easily resize them on your printer to make them larger/smaller to suit your needs.

It took me a little longer to do this than I thought, because it was what I was working on when it became time to service my machine. It started knocking, so that was my queue to turn it over to the serviceman. It came back a few days later than I expected it to, but it was good as new so I can't complain.

This butterfly fabric was too fun to pass up, so I used it for the backing of the quilt. We didn't get to see her this year for Christmas (it's too far to travel to see both our families at the holidays, and this year was my family's turn) but I mailed it to her instead. She got it just in time for Christmas, and didn't even cheat by opening it early.

I'm happy to report she loved it and even had a space to hang it on the wall. It ended up being a little larger than I had set out to make it, and I was hoping she'd be able to find a place for it. She was kind enough to send me a photo of it hanging in her house.