Saturday, November 10, 2007

Butterfly Two

This is one of the "ewwww, that's icky" patterns reworked until I like it pretty well. The first one in Cébélia size 30 has no form to its body, but I rather liked the way the wings were working. Again with the size 30 I tried a new body and a bit of modification to the wings. Yes, that was better. Next I thought I'd try it in purple Coats quilting thread. Oops. I forgot a couple of picots -- can't hook a wing to its head! The first little one is, therefore, not a butterfly. It has no butter. It's just a fly. Try again. Rats, I did the bottom ring in the wrong sequence --again-- which made the chain joins down there weird. Still, it looks pretty good and I decided where the "magic threads" had to go. The final one is in Coats pastel variegated quilting thread. I didn't use the magic threads because this one is going on my jeans bag as well. I might try another one and reduce the size of the first set of chains on the bottom wing because it's just a bit squarish looking -- but mostly I like it.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Butterfly One

Progression of the middle butterfly... The first incarnation in yellow Cébélia size 30 had too much going on in the center -- lots of chains to get the thread back to where I wanted to go without cutting (not to mention the halves didn't match). The second incarnation moves the thread in a better way to get all around this butterfly in one pass. That seemed to work, so I tried in in Coats rainbow quilting thread. Then I had this brainstorm in thinking that I could do the whole thing using a chain to connect the bits and just join the chain at the end. That also works, but gives a totally different look to the center. I left the long threads on the last one so I can sew it on my Treasures from Trash bag. The others will probably go into a little pile of "dunno, I'll decide what to do with that some other time." I'm working on a new one now and have two others in the "ewww that's icky" stage. Still, its possible the patterns can be altered enough to be not icky.