The finished zigzag quilt- The Morpho....

The Morpho Quilt-

I participated in the Zigzag Quilt Along at the Old Red Barn Co flickr group and from Amy at Parkcitygirl, where I learned SO much about the proper way to make a zigzag quilt using half-square triangles. It's never too late to join in, either, so if you want to learn how to make one and make some new friends at the same time, join us! We've made 2 quilts at this flickr group now and we're having a ball doing it.

I wanted something for the foot of our bed where the cats hang out most of the day, resting up from a busy night of hunting and prowling around. I'm sick to death of the towels that I keep there, trying to capture the cat hair before it wafts up to our pillows where we puff and spit at night, cat hairs in your mouth are very hard to catch! Since the cats all seem to like the other quilts I've done so much, I thought they deserved a couple of their own. This is the first one of two. The next one will coordinate but be completely different.

This is how you start out- first- pick out your fabrics and lay them out in a pleasing fashion. Then cut the fabric up into little bits. :) I used 5" squares. Start laying out your squares in the order you want your rows of zigzags to be. It was very confusing at the beginning but once you've done it, you're better able to picture how the squares will look as zigzags. Charts, notes and photos are very helpful in keeping you organized and on track.

Then you sew the squares together on the diagonal and cut them apart, press and you have your blocks ready to sew together to each other.

Once the top is all pieced, you're ready to make a quilt out of it. You lay down the backing, put the batting on that, lay the top on it and pin the snot out of it. :) Then you quilt it. I wanted something fast and easy and not terribly time-consuming, but also wanted it to be able to stand up to many, many launderings. So I was inspired by a doll quilt with long swoopy lines of stitching and that's what I did on this quilt.

I love these swoopy lines.

The Morpho quilt is named after the Blue Morpho Butterfly, an iridescent blue butterfly that is incredibly beautiful. Since there are butterflies in this quilt and the quilting is reminiscent of the lines in butterfly wings, I named it Morpho. Murphy will love it, he'll think it's named after him. He's our goofy boy.

If you've got questions, we've got answers! Just like Ace Hardware.....