My 1st Morfo Butterfly is Complete

It's done and I love it! I admit it was a challenge. I was determined to use some lovely beads I had on hand, and I had to go digging several times for the 'right' beads to go with them, but it was worth the effort. Angela Gambka has designed a wonderful pattern that is so versatile. I used her videos without sound to see how she handled bead placement in the original. There were a few times that I cut the sewn in beads out and started over because I wanted to try something a little different. I'm very happy with the result.

Note: The lighting is still artificial, but I just couldn't wait till daylight to show you how it turned out.

Motif #18 for the 25 Motif Challenge

Flora size 20 in color #227 with assorted beads

4 cm across widest part of wing span; 4.5 cm from tips of antennae to lower wing tips

Marie, I understand your fascination with these butterflies now. I'm looking forward to starting another one. In fact, I plan to clean away everything and then go digging for the beads for the next one. I'm thinking red, black, and gold this time.

Kathy, you asked me earlier about the bead placement that looks like two rows of beads in 4 of those rings on the front of the butterfly. You load all of those beads onto your shuttle with those for the outer row coming off the shuttle before those on the inner row. When you wrap to start the ring, you need all of those for the outer row within the circle. When you slide one of those beads into place at a picot, you slide one from the shuttle into place beneath it on the core thread. It's the same method that forms the 4 beaded tips to the wings. The dark bead is on the core thread and the lighter ones are enclosed in the picot.

Front of Morfo Butterfly

The front side of the butterfly is tatted. As you can see, some of the beads are tatted in. I've used pink and dark purple beads so far with this size 20 Flora color #227 (a soft shade of blue). Next will be the addition of more beads with needle and thread.

Angela Gambka's Morfo Butterfly

Marie has shared several lovely butterflies that she has made with Angela Gambka's Morfo Butterfly pattern through her blog, West Pine Creations. I've found them inspiring. I've had it on my tatting list for quite a while. Today was the day. Marie has been a tremendous help. I've practiced by just tatting the back piece several times. Here are a few of my efforts. I feel the blue one is good enough to use, so I'm going to load some beads for the top one, which I hope to tat tomorrow evening.

Have a wonderful week, everyone. I hope to have a finished butterfly to share with you before the week is over.