Seams French

Prepping, Marking and Basting Boutis is traditionally worked on a good quality white cotton batiste. A good quality batiste is lightweight, finely woven, and semi sheer. These characteristics make it perfect for boutis.   It has a silky, buttery texture that the needle loves to glide through and makes it easier to obtain tiny stitches. Because of the translucence of the fabric, the black marker lines of the pattern are visible without the use of a light box. I purchased this particular piece at the Musée La Maison du Boutis in Calvisson, in the south of France, a number of years ago and had been saving it for a special project.  The design is quite visible underneath the batiste without the use of a light box. Two equal size pieces of the batiste are cut to accommodate the size of the design allowing a generous border for easy hooping. For the bottom piece, I used a different batiste. It's still just as closely woven, but not quite as fine. Strength is important because

For the last number of weeks when I have not been in production mode on my Scrap Buster quilt, or hand stitching one of several boutis projects in process , I have been working on some new quilting and boutis designs.  A new rose window design for boutis is almost ready to be transferred to fabric. This time the design is inspired by the rose window in the south transept of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. One of my photos of the south transept rose window of Notre Dame Cathedral. When I had completed the stitching on this little square of boutis and was looking for a way to finish it, the idea to combine it with free motion quilting and create a larger wall hanging (below) came as an afterthought. The boutis is central to this combined machine/boutis wall hanging. I quite liked this idea and decided to try it again, this time making the window completely into a boutis piece. Using our photo of Notre Dame Cathedral as the basis for the design, my Autocad enabled h