Butterfly's progress

I needed a portable project ready to take with me to stitchers' meetings, and I also needed to make a little surprise for a friend, who may read this blog, so I won't reveal the destination.

So, since I think I've finished with the Big Stitch, and need a rest from it before I remove it from the current backing and tack it to its permanent stretchers and put a backing on it, hated tasks, glad to postpone them briefly, I thought now is the time to go to the next small thing.

So here's my butterfly:  it's going to be couched, with metal threads of various colors, beaded, and it will have real amber in it, beads from a necklace I had many years ago,which never really suited my coloring, and which has now been broken up, pieces appearing in various artworks. And pearls, not real, just beads, and all kinds of cool stuff.  I think the recipient will like this.

I swiped a public domain drawing (please note,I don't swipe other people's copyright drawings, just sayin') and transferred it this morning to a piece of nice Belgian linen, then got going.  

It's really fun to be able to stab through again, after days and days of working with a piece already on a backing. This is almost the last of the Belgian linen I harvested (!) from a blouse from the thrift store, lovely stuff, beautifully constructed, and very very badly cut in such a way that it didn't fit anyone.  Sleeves for a size 2, top of bodice for maybe a 16, lower bodice for maybe a 6, who knows what committee designed this.  So I had no compunction in upcycling it.

And since we have a major snowfall and extreme low temps, while my friends are out digging out my car and moving it to let the bobcat finish the digging in my spot, this is a good day to cheer them on and stay indoors stitching and beading. 

I really like my tealight bead bins, now fully in action, very useful.  Easy to see my beads without pawing through little bags, and a friend who saw them said, ah, I'll find more of those for you!  Sounds good to me.