My 1st Morfo in Natural Light

Artificial light seems to rarely do justice to color, so I wanted to get at least one nice picture of Morfo in daylight. The colors are much truer in this picture.

The beads in the center of each wing, beneath the tatting, are clear iridescent beads. I love the way they pick up the color of nearby objects.

Someone asked me about bead sizes. I keep a collection of interesting beads, many of them were once part of necklaces. In fact, I used four different necklaces for seven different sizes of beads for this butterfly. I also used seed beads from a bag of inexpensive glass seed beads of mixed colors that I once picked up at Hobby Lobby. I've used the blue, purple, and pink ones from that assortment. The largest bead is the one in the body of the butterfly. It is 1.5 cm in length. I sewed it in vertically rather than horizontally as it is oblong. If you make the butterfly following Angela's instructions exactly, you will not use as many different sizes and colors of beads.

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.

Side 1 of Morfo is Beaded

I'm sharing my progress as I go in hopes that it will encourage some of you as you begin. It's challenging to do this the first time, and I've probably made it more so because I already had some beads I really wanted to use that aren't the suggested sizes. I haven't taken the time to manipulate all of the rings back into shape before posting, but here it is from the top and the side, but still with artificial light.

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.

Progress

It's been a busy week so far with very little time to tat. I managed a couple of repeats in the final round of the doily tonight. I also spent some time selecting the beads for the butterfly. Those that will be tatted in are loaded on the shuttle.

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.