Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Butterfly Six

I still have that ball of yellow DMC Cébélia size 30, so I made another butterfly. This one worked quite well right from the beginning I only made a couple of changes in the center of the upper wing and the head. The upper wings did turn out to be a lot more uplifted than horizontally stretched as I had sketched the pattern. It looks okay to me, though -- it seems happier and less moth-ish. After doing a second one in the yellow Cébélia to make the change to the head and check the stitch count for the change in the center of the upper wing, I tried it with Coats cotton quilting thread. I had a lot of difficulty getting the 6 ds rings to close in the clovers of the lower wings. If I did this again in small thread, I think I might just use a single ring on top of those chains instead of the clover. I wanted to try some Sulky machine embroidery rayon thread, but decided against it after the problems with the Coats and worrying about stretching the rayon. So, I wound the rayon thread with some DMC size 80 purple and made another one. It's the same size as the ones made of the size 30 thread!
I never did remember to put the magic threads in; I just tied knots in the thread ends and cut them off. Then I couldn't find my fabric glue -- I suspect it is holding a crayon art project together somewhere in the house. Good thing these are just trials because I also made the mistake of thinking it wouldn't matter if I put them on my styrofoam starch board without its customary pillowcase covering. Wrong. They've got bits of styrofoam stuck to them. Pattern pieces -- they are pattern pieces (but it still makes me grumbly when I do goofy things like that)!

OH! -- Happy New Year, everyone!