Butterflies, Simple & Easy

I've worked with butterfly wing designs before, but other than the Luna Moth, most weren't all that memorable.  So I did some online picture research and started sketching out wing patterns and eventually came up with one design that I liked.  It's got a 6" wingspread from tip to tip, is all done as one piece so I don't have to do an upper and lower wing set separately, and it's simplified enough that I can do up 20 at a time fairly easily.

The design works with polar fleece, but could just as well have the bottom layer be felt for added stiffness.  I wasn't planning on stuffing the wings but they were so limp that I ended up suing a thin layer of stuffing between them.  The outline was sewn all the way around and I tucked in a 4" section of rat tail cording (2mm size) with knots on the end for the antenna as I machine sewed across the upper part of the wings.  There were indents between the upper and lower parts, clipped/trimmed close with a scissors after I went all the way around. Then I did a small slice where the body would be and stuffed the wings lightly.

All that was needed was a body, which I use the grey fake fur fabric for visual texture.  I had bits and pieces of that plus some bits from the Soft & Cuddly brand fuzzy fabrics, so I can do different colored bodies.  Once the vaguely rectangular circle was gathered and stuffed I just tacked it down tightly to the wings on top as a 'body' and then added 8 mm black pony bead eyes and it was done.  

They work best with a printed top and solid complementary color underside. No turning, no piecing wings together. Simple and fast.  They make good decorative pieces for hairbands, or kids toys, package decorating pieces OR cat toys!  The catnip goes into the butterfly body not the wings.  Finished size of the wings is 6" x 4".

Blue Jays - Companions To The Cardinals

The blue jay pattern I designed was based on my cardinal design but a little larger and with wider tails.  They've been SO hard to mess around with though since these birds have bars and stripes on the wings and tail.  I waffled over doing machine applique with appropriately colored felt and trimming or to do it with acrylic paints.

Unfortunately white acrylic paint going onto a dark colored fabric doesn't often work very well.  Plus I needed to use a bit of plastic stiffener in the tails because they were longer and wider (heavier) than the cardinal tails had been. 

I cut and sewed a set of six blue jays, machine appliqueing the white tail tips and wing feathers with white felt along with adding two black felt stripes on the tail.  Which meant more time on each of those parts on the sewing machine.

But even so, the finished birds still looked too plain with just that so I pulled out my black acrylic paint and used a toothpick to paint on more tail stripes and some wing markings.  Plus I had to carefully paint a black edge on the white face part as well. 

It went pretty quick once I had three of the first six birds assembled.  The other three birds I’d cut out and stuffed but they were still in separate parts, it was getting too late last night to finish them all.

The birds all were given the blue marabou feather fluff behind their crest as well.  And I used silver beads to stitch the wings on. The cardinals had gotten gold beads.  All of the paint dried overnight as expected, as did the glue holding the feather fluff.  Seeing them in the morning after I had a good night's sleep let me examine them with fresh eyes.  I think any future ones will have only the white markings applied by machine, I'll do all the black markings with acrylic paint.

The fabric that I used for the body had 'visual texture' same as the cardinals did.  I'd located a blue feather print in the fancy cottons at JoAnn's and got a quarter yard of it to test out.  There's some metallic silver threading through it so it's got a bit more flash. The wings, crest, tail and white face circle are all felt, either blue or white.  The finished birds got a length of fishing line sewn into them to hang, and I attached a silk fern sprig, that I'd gotten at Michael's, under the belly to add visual interest like they're perching on a plant. 

Here's the fabric I used for the body.  It really made the birds stand out!