Thoughts from Last Week - Butterflies

I’ve been working on the Butterfly series for a while now and liking the design more and more. I never thought of myself as a butterfly sort of person – all that fussy lightness just doesn’t feel like me actually. But there is something about this design that just resonates (well it should because it is, after all, my design – butterflies seen through my own particular lens). I’m not doing it because I thought commercially butterflies would be a good idea (which they are and it will be). This started as a design with an antique border pattern of flowers that I found in a very very old pattern book, and, by the time I was done, it was flowers and butterflies and antique monograms. The more I developed it, the more I enjoyed it. I am calling the pattern “Butterfly Memento” – because what I see is that its a moment in time – a summer day – poised and perfect with flowers and that butterfly – the butterfly itself is a moment – poised so briefly transforming from one state to another. A day, no matter how perfect, is always changing – like the flowers and the butterfly – you can’t press them or hold them – but you can remember them at that one perfect moment. So the colors are clear and bright, the frame and background are antique – the lettering and monogram are quaint. Even the blue flowers are Forget-Me-Nots.

Butterflies Again

The longer I work on the butterfly series, the more I like it.  There is something that comes from the heart about it and I think that, even once its done, I will enjoy using the pieces I’ve made.  The final piece to any series is the etui (stitcher’s wallet, huswif, whatever you call it).  It will be sold as a separate pattern because not everybody wants one and it sort of duplicates the functions of the needlebook and scissors sheath.  I will still include a scissors fob with it, though, just for fun.  I have been toying with it for some days now.  first fiddling with the size.  Being a geometric border with a fairly long repeat, any increase in dimension is done in substantial increments of about an inch.  I got it all done and decided that at 4 x 5 inches it wasn’t quite large enough.  I got the initials changed and then they didn’t fill the space right.  etc etc.  but this is the fun of designing anything – like working puzzles.  Playing with the elements until I feel that little *click* in my head that says it just right.  This morning it finally all came together.  The larger monogram filled the space just right and the font style is beautifully compatible with the other elements.  I shaded the foreground letter (the M) and added the little blue flower to pull it all together and *click* – Ta-da! It’s a definite YES! 

Now there’s a lot of busy work to be done charting the rest of the alphabet – that will be  couple of days of picky eye-strain.  Taking the antique letters and adding the flowers and shading and outlines to each one to match the ones on the design copy.  The added joy to this will be that I will have another beautifully charted alphabet to use again later.  And the butterfly etui panel just makes me happy all over.  When it all comes together like this, its better than chocolate ice cream.