Motif 6: Butterflies old and new

I have two butterflies to show. The first is this little motif from Tatted Butterflies by Adelheid Dangela, done in hand dyed Cebelia 20. I just got the book last week. There are no written directions, just some charming hand drawn diagrams. I love it! No words means I can just dive right in and tat.

 

Next is this butterfly from last year. The little lady claimed it, and I finally put it on a dress for her birthday earlier this month. I tried a new technique for attaching the butterfly. First, I sprayed the back of the tatting with spray mount. Then I stuck the butterfly on the dress and stitched down the picots with a sort of running stitch.

The spray adhesive worked much better than the method I used for the little lady's snowflake dress. For that dress, I pinned down the snowflakes. The pins distorted the motifs and I ended up pulling out a lot of stitches. The spray mount made the butterfly stick, sort of like masking tape. I could stitch the picots down very quickly, and the spray came out easily in the wash. I probably wouldn't try this on an heirloom, or something delicate, but for something utilitarian, it works great.

Here are some close-ups. Here's the butterfly on the front.

There are pink bias binding strips for straps, and a teardrop for the back. The button is purple. It doesn't match, but it's the little lady's favourite colour (after pink of course).

I'm making a lot of sleeveless dresses lately, for two reasons:-
1) There are few things lovelier than a little girl in a sun dress
2) I'm afraid of sleeve caps

Anyway, that's all from me today. My workload hasn't really decreased, but I've found that trying to make more time by not crafting just makes me cranky and unproductive. So hopefully the next post won't take a whole month.