One of my art quilts has been "stalled" for a couple of years . . . I started out with wonderful ideas of doing a flight of stylized butterflies across a background of hand dyed fabric (the first piece I ever dyed, that I had been saving for years!) . . . but as I approached the critical time of adding those butterflies, I found that they had lost some of their allure. I couldn't figure out the problem so I finally rolled up the quilt and it sat on a shelf for a year or more.
At some point last year I hauled it out again and pinned it to my design wall so that it would not be too far from my thoughts . . . but, still I did nothing with it.
Yesterday, however, I re-discovered one of my favourite books and the wonderful natural life created in fibre by Annemeike Mein, and I decided to play a little bit with a different style of butterfly. I don't know exactly how she makes her butterflies but I made up my own version using her photos as inspiration.
Here are the wings I made, created as two units of upper and lower wings, free motion stitched in a variety of threads. They have been created on green silk organza with heavy duty Solvy used as a backing.
I still have to create the body of the butterfly, but I am pleased with this first attempt.
