The striking quilt is called Butterfly’s Delight and is hand appliqued and extensively hand quilted, taking three years to complete. The inspiration for this quilt came from the purchase of two yards of rainbow-spectrum fabric of very bright primary colors that Millie said, “she just had to have.” At the time, bright quilts were popular and the colorful fabric was a good place to start. She also wanted to branch out and design a quilt with larger, more fanciful appliques. Some of the design elements came from a Dover copyright-free book. She paper foundation pieced the flying geese and the Greek Key border. The geometry of the Greek Key pattern dictated the need to work out an exact size of the box shape for it to fit symmetrically as a border on the quilt. Millie writes that to achieve this with precision, she drew a grid on the red fabric with a blue water-soluble marker, and then placed ¾ inch stripes on the grid to create the linking box shapes. Once the size was established, she appliqued the pieces in place.
Millie tells the story of a near tragedy when removing the blue marker with water. The water caused the red dye to bleed onto the white cotton sateen background. She recounts, “I was sick, but I had taken out bleeding before with Biz (a type of laundry soap) and since the quilt was mainly applique I checked all the fabrics to see that it would not harm them and put the (quilt) top in a solution of Biz. It all came out and I was ready to hand quilt the quilt.” She used Hobbs wool batting and silk quilting thread for the quilting.
