Butterfly, and fame at last!

Today's blogpost on Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread, includes this blog you're reading in her Big List of Needlework Blogs.  So cool!  and thank you, Mary, much appreciated. 

Meanwhile, back in the studio, the first butterfly has emerged.  She's stitched with goldwork and blue metallic thread, beaded, and lined with a silk butterfly, same image, but reversed so as to fit on the back.  The apparent spaces on her wings are where the walnut stained linen shows through, as part of her coloring.

The lining is needed so that the underwings are finished, and to cover the stitching from the topside.  I wired the beaded front with 28 gauge copper wire, so that the butterfly can be posed with her wings up or at any angle to whatever surface she lands on, when I decide what that is to be.  It's great fun playing with her, and in fact she looks pretty lifelike perched on my hand.  Strange blue effect took place, but my hand is the usual color in real life.

I have several other butterflies, from the same stamp I carved, ready to do likewise.