Flutter & Fly Pillow with Clover Farm

Have you seen Gracey Larson’s fabric line “Clover Farm”? It’s a sweet, delicate collection of prints that are perfect for a project to celebrate spring.

One easy way to add spring décor to our homes is by making pillow covers. I made this pillow using the butterfly block by My Sew Quilty Life’s Flutter and Fly pattern. This is a quilt pattern that I’ve been wanting to make for a long but haven’t had a chance to make enough blocks for a quilt, so I took one of my favorite blocks and turned it into a pillow cover.

For this pillow, I used the Wallpaper Tea Rose print for the outline of the butterfly and the Riley Blake Texture Sweet Mint print as the inside of the butterfly. The Clover Pink print was perfect as a border and to tie it all together I used the Clover Green print for the binding. The back of the pillow was made using a envelope style closure with the Clover Farm Main White print. I love that the pillow looks beautiful from both the front and back!

After I put the border around the block and quilted it on some batting, I noticed the white space was more than I wanted. Instead of reaching for my seam ripper, I realized the white space was just enough to add a short inspirational saying. I have always been fascinated by the look of hand lettering and wanted to incorporated it into a quilt, but never did before. This was a great opportunity to practice hand embroidery, hand lettering and hand quilting all in one project!

If adding embroidery is new to you, like it is to me, I started out by using a wash away marker to outline my letters. Then I made my own variegated thread by threading light green and dark green threads through my needle and doubling them up so that it was 4 strands thick. I didn’t use an embroidery hoop, but I don’t think it was necessary since my fabric was quilted and therefore a little sturdy to begin with. The stitches I used for the project were back stitches and running stitches.

This project was a great one for me to “spread my [creative] wings.” In addition to adding embroidery and lettering to this project, I also learned to be ok with mistakes. If you look closely at the butterfly’s “upper body”, it’s a little more buff than the pattern calls for. It turns out that I mistakenly added 2 extra pieces to the chest of the butterfly. Instead of fussing over it and trying to take it out, I left it in because I love the fabric print and color so much. Now when I look at the butterfly I just imagine that it is doing chest openers exercises and really spreading it’s wings lol 😁.

How will you be sewing with this beautiful line of fabric and what’s one of your project bloopers that you chose to keep in?

Happy sewing!