Stumpwork Butterfly Sandie Maher March Meeting 2016

This month we were pleased to welcome Sandie Maher who had brought a lot of her beautiful stumpwork pieces with her. These included trees, leaves, boxes and especially some of her brightly coloured butterflies, many of which you can see in the pictures below.We were all looking forward to having a go at making a stumpwork butterfly.

 Sandie explained we were going to draw a pair of top wings and a pair of bottom wings onto our calico based on the butterfly species we had chosen. Sandie then demonstrated how to seed stitch in the wings followed by working satin stitch over the top.

We all set to work trying to make our encroaching satin stitch as neat as possible!

Couching the wire around the edge of the wing was demonstrated followed by buttonhole stitch to cover the wire.

 Most of us managed to finish one wing and over the next few weeks we hope to complete the other three wings.
Sandie demonstrated how to attach the wings and fix them in place and showed us how to make three different types of bodies for our butterflies.
By the next meeting there will be myriads of butterflies all ready to be photographed and the pictures forwarded to Sandie.
Thank you Sandie for an enjoyable day and introducing some of us to stumpwork for the first time and reminding others of this useful and attractive embroidery skill.

One of the butterflies has now been completed and just waiting for a frame! 

Putting detail on the wings

All four wings ready to attach to background

Body embroidered to background

Wings attached to either side of body

Antennae attached to butterfly

Completed butterfly and flowers

A pretty green butterfly completed