Butterfly Season in the Studio 🌱

I’ve got a shirt in the works that I’m enjoying covering in little embroidered flower-filled butterflies. This shirt is a pale yellow Oxford-style long-sleeve that I thrifted a while ago. I like to throw it on as it a layer sometimes. But I wasn’t reaching for it as often as some of my other pieces, so I wanted to alter it.

What started as a low-stakes crafty idea, became kind of an ambitious undertaking— especially since my speed at hand embroidery is still developing.

Old Shirt, New Story ✦

I have a soft spot for folk art [See: July Faves 🫘], especially the kind that layers an image within an image. I searched Pinterest for some inspiration and came across this illustration by Katherine Herrell. All props to her for designing such cute butterflies.

Breaking the Pattern ✦

I did try out a more ‘painterly’ embroidery style on one of the butterflies because I wanted to add calla lilies (lovee these, especially the sunset colored ones). And due to their curves, they require a little bit of shading which I may have gotten carried away with by stitching way too small.

I like seeing how my embroidery style changes as I get bored or need to find a solution to a technical roadblock. There are some areas on the shirt where I ran out of a certain color thread or changed my mind on the color choices for a bloom— and I think these little changes add some extra human flavor to the piece.

A Bit of Summer in My Bag ✦

Once it’s complete, I’ll post the finished version. For now, I’m loving taking this project everywhere with me as my portable summer craft.

˖᯽ ݁˖