So, I have been dipping in and out of embroidering my small tortoiseshell butterfly, however, whilst waiting for my daughter at a swimming party I decided to re-read the book ‘Long and short stitch embroidery’ by Trish Bur, a book I have read many times but not picked up for awhile. It dawned on me that I had got lazy, I had skipped several steps that are there to help me as well as improve the final look of the piece.

If you look closely you can probably see that I forgot to split stitch the edge of the wing before starting, this has meant that I haven’t got a sharp image. I also didn’t bother to mark stitch direction lines so moving from one colour to the next has got a bit confused.

This has been a good exercise in keeping my mind sewing and seeing how taking the time to do these extra little bits of process can improve the image.

Right, I am going to start from the beginning and try not to skip steps.

I am going to use this honeysuckle photo as a start for a new piece, the focal point is a bit confused but i can work with it:

I started with the drawing, improvising the rest of the picture with some leaf and berry photos:

I haven’t got my paints out for many, many years but I found this great fun. Acrylics:

I am using a silk/cotton blend of fabric and backing the piece with cotton. To transfer the image onto the silk I use a lightpad, I love this pad, before I had this I would be rushing to the patio doors every time the sun came out:

Then, finally, I have wrapped a wooden hoop with cotton to protect the fabric and stretched the image drum tight:

Deep breath, what to do now, direction lines….