DBH as a raw material

Gulp – Its a short post folks !

You know, I was actually, dare I say, quite pleased with how that little butterfly was turning out.  It was packed with so many stitches and it represents a kind of turning point for me, in that I stopped work on The Bag to look at 2-d embroidery more closely.  Then realised I had certain questions about the transition between 2-d and 3-d.  Then I produced my file…

and then, Elizabethan Stitches came out….

So I decided to celebrate, and chopped up sections of my doodle cloth to turn caterpillars into butterflies!

  

I’m going to make a scissors fob by taking 2 motifs,  cutting them into circles, machining them together and then concealing the seam with Twinning and attaching a  ribbon. 

Things were going OK, then I decided that as this scissor fob was going to be for me this time, I wanted to make it as ‘keepsake’ as possible, so went to town embellishing.

Not the usual order of work, I hear you say, but a stolen hour can get quite hectic at the best of times.

And as I was working, I was reminded just how versatile DBH is as a raw material, I mean look at all the things you can do with it: sew it flat, sew it in mid-air, stuff it, mix it with gold and on top of that, its just asking for highlights and accents and all sorts of stuff to be added.

Although my version of this butterfly looks very different from the original, what I like about the finished motif is that it reminds me of those wonderful Anglo Saxon and Viking brooches I saw in the Museum last year.  Not that I saw any butterflies on the brooches, but what I mean is the essence of their bold designs and the primitive treatment of a mini-beast with outstretched wings, to me, almost suggests bygone pagan worship….or am I getting carried away here?

Gotta go ppl!