Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[Sunshine]

Good morning, fellow artistes. Nice to see you all again. I would have been gone anyway. My big sis died and was buried on Sunday after about a week in the hospital.

 

[BDBoop]

Good morning, fellow artistes. Nice to see you all again. I would have been gone anyway. My big sis died and was buried on Sunday after about a week in the hospital.

OMG, no. I am so, so sorry to read of your loss. Was this completely unexpected?

 

[Sunshine]

Good morning, fellow artistes. Nice to see you all again. I would have been gone anyway. My big sis died and was buried on Sunday after about a week in the hospital.

OMG, no. I am so, so sorry to read of your loss. Was this completely unexpected?

Actually, no. She was a lot older than me. It seems in the 30s my folks adopted this little 2 year old girl, my big sister. She was the cutest little thing in the pics. But she wasn't smiling in pics at first. There is no telling what she had gone through before my parents got her. She may not even have known how to smile. She had Alzheimer's for several years, and had been end stage for the last months. She lost mobility about 3 or 4 months ago, so we knew the end was near. Not unexpected at all.

 

[Sunshine]

Butterfly 2. Found some pictures of a Southern Dogface Sulphur butterfly and liked its coloration, so adapted that to the antennae area of block 2's sulphur-colored butterfly to reflect Southern Dogface's antennae and outer touch of woodrose colorations. Here's the Southern Dogface Zerene cessonia and (finally) completed block as well:

Thank heavens for EBay. I got over 100 skeins of DMC cotton in a lot someone was selling, for the price of about 15 new skeins, and the colors included 3 acceptable colors, but I liked the woodrose color best. Most of the lot were unopened skeins. Lucky me. Every trip you can save to town is gasoline you don't have to spend. Gas is a fortune these days for those of us on a fixed income.

Is that butterfly yellow or green? I helped my nephew make the funeral arrangements for his mother, my sister. When I got home there was a yellow butter flitting about in my yard. Once it even flew over to my car and touched it, but did not lite. The yellow butterfly is supposed to be a sign from the spirit world that the person is OK.

After Death Communications: Look For the Yellow Butterfly by Patricia Oglesby

Always look for the yellow butterfly.

 

[Sunshine]

I have been drooling after standing embroidering frames for some time now. My arms and hands go numb quickly when I'm crocheting and embroidering these days. The frame won't help with crochet but I think it would be wonderful for needlework. They have all sorts of cool ones..stand along ones, and ones that you sit on to hold in place...

Let's see if I have this right. You can't stand thimbles, and your arms and hands go numb these days with putting a lot of time into those fabulous embroideries.

In a nutshell, that's: Acupuncture!

You probably feel pretty happy after a finger-jabbing session, too. I gave my fingers one more day of break. I think what did it was doing a dozen lazy daisies, a dozen leaves, and 3 dozen French knots plus the remainder of the blue butterfly all in one day. To get my thoughts reordered to do the next butterfly, I kept thinking how much this butterfly has so little resemblance to a sulfur butterfly, but I love them anyway in spite of their tiny size (1/2 inch to 2 inches, and they're either all yellow or lime green or somewhere in between, so I went online to get inspired. I didn't start embroidering until after noon, and got one more floral corner done in yellow, then worked my way up to the inner parts of the wing, also in yellow. But the pictures of the sulphurs ranged from lime green to yellow and even orange, almost, so I'm doing one in a mix of yellow and hot lime. Here are a couple of pictures of sulphur butterflies. I had literally dozens of sulphurs on my old computer that ate its desktop away.

I'm not believing all these yellow butterfly pics. What synchronicity!

 

[Sunshine]

I use a leather thimble that my mother got me. Love it. My fingertips sweat in metal ones, and I have a hard time finding ones that fit right and don't feel all clunky.

Never heard of a leather thimble. Got one bookmarked on Amazon. I have the thimble my mother used. She collected and I have some of her collection.

 

[Sunshine]

Butterfly 2. Found some pictures of a Southern Dogface Sulphur butterfly and liked its coloration, so adapted that to the antennae area of block 2's sulphur-colored butterfly to reflect Southern Dogface's antennae and outer touch of woodrose colorations. Here's the Southern Dogface Zerene cessonia and (finally) completed block as well:

Thank heavens for EBay. I got over 100 skeins of DMC cotton in a lot someone was selling, for the price of about 15 new skeins, and the colors included 3 acceptable colors, but I liked the woodrose color best. Most of the lot were unopened skeins. Lucky me. Every trip you can save to town is gasoline you don't have to spend. Gas is a fortune these days for those of us on a fixed income.

Is that butterfly yellow or green? I helped my nephew make the funeral arrangements for his mother, my sister. When I got home there was a yellow butter flitting about in my yard. Once it even flew over to my car and touched it, but did not lite. The yellow butterfly is supposed to be a sign from the spirit world that the person is OK.

After Death Communications: Look For the Yellow Butterfly by Patricia Oglesby

Always look for the yellow butterfly.

And another:

Comfort Comes on the Wings of a Butterfly - Guideposts

 

[freedombecki]

hmmm...you can try more twists, or use more floss. Instead of using 2 strands, or three, use the whole thing. I think if you use more than two wraps, the knots are going to be loppy.

I'll see what I can find. I have run across some really cool sites on embroidery stitches in the past! But i dont see any directions on how to make them bigger, other than one vs. 2 wraps around the thread. But I think using more floss would probably do the trick.

[MENTION=31640]koshergrl[/MENTION]
So that's what I'm doing wrong! I've been wrapping thrice, thinking it was less than my mother must've used. Now that you said that, that's why my French knots are irregular, and I can barely manage the three loops. So what did I do? I tried four loops! <gong> I went back to 3 loops and snorted my way through 72 knots that one day. Gr-r-r-r!

A friend put me on her and her husband's prayer list this morning, and after I took a nap, a lot of my pain was absent. Thanks to all who helped me get through this past week. My husband is truly having problems with his dementia and personal grooming, and I don't know how to make it better, except to keep up the drill sergeant routine, although I hate it worse than anything I ever had to do. He is not seeing a need to answer, unless I get in his face. He is not reserving this behavior just for me, either. Thanks for the prayers, everyone.

And right now, prayers up for Sunshine for losing her sister, and for her sister's family who've likely had better days.

 

[freedombecki]

Butterfly 2. Found some pictures of a Southern Dogface Sulphur butterfly and liked its coloration, so adapted that to the antennae area of block 2's sulphur-colored butterfly to reflect Southern Dogface's antennae and outer touch of woodrose colorations. Here's the Southern Dogface Zerene cessonia and (finally) completed block as well:

Thank heavens for EBay. I got over 100 skeins of DMC cotton in a lot someone was selling, for the price of about 15 new skeins, and the colors included 3 acceptable colors, but I liked the woodrose color best. Most of the lot were unopened skeins. Lucky me. Every trip you can save to town is gasoline you don't have to spend. Gas is a fortune these days for those of us on a fixed income.

Is that butterfly yellow or green? I helped my nephew make the funeral arrangements for his mother, my sister. When I got home there was a yellow butter flitting about in my yard. Once it even flew over to my car and touched it, but did not lite. The yellow butterfly is supposed to be a sign from the spirit world that the person is OK.

After Death Communications: Look For the Yellow Butterfly by Patricia Oglesby

Always look for the yellow butterfly.

And another:

Comfort Comes on the Wings of a Butterfly - Guideposts

Most sulphur butterflies have yellow somewhere on them, but I love the lime color ones. After the pink butterfly block I'm working on right now, I promise the next one will be a bright yellow one in honor of your love for your sister, Sunshine.

Day before yesterday, I was out on the back 40 (square yards, Heheh) and the only butterflies I've seen in a month had to fly quickly while joined to get out of the path of the behemoth my Kubota tractor must seem to them. I'm glad they escaped. They were gorgeous Gulf coast fritillaries.

The pink "butterfly" colorations I have lined out for this block are from a pink moth found in the south named the Virginia rosy maple leaf moth, or Hyperpax aurora, and east that looks like these below ones. I'm locked into the pink one because I decided to do the matching border, or at least part of it first, because it's so boring to have to do the whole thing all at once after you've finished the butterfly. I have to say, though, it's fun thumbing through my pictures files where I've saved the truly prettiest butterflies I could find on the internet. Here's Hyperpax aurora and my pitiful start earlier today:

 

[freedombecki]

[MENTION=21954]Sunshine[/MENTION], thanks for the inspiring read about the yellow butterfly.

 

[Sunshine]

[MENTION=21954]Sunshine[/MENTION], thanks for the inspiring read about the yellow butterfly.

Fabulous. IOU rep!

 

[freedombecki]

Aw, shucks, Sunshine. You know we're happy to see you. Having you back at USMB is many IOUs paid back in advance, you know.

 

[BDBoop]

Aw, shucks, Sunshine. You know we're happy to see you. Having you back at USMB is many IOUs paid back in advance, you know.

Agreed. I hate when they toss people out the door, and we don't know what happened, or when we can expect to see them again.

 

[freedombecki]

hmmm...you can try more twists, or use more floss. Instead of using 2 strands, or three, use the whole thing. I think if you use more than two wraps, the knots are going to be loppy.

I'll see what I can find. I have run across some really cool sites on embroidery stitches in the past! But i dont see any directions on how to make them bigger, other than one vs. 2 wraps around the thread. But I think using more floss would probably do the trick.

Last night, [MENTION=31640]koshergrl[/MENTION], I tried the 2 wraps, and it made beautiful French Knots like my mother used to make. I'm glad you mentioned that. Using two wraps (with 3 threads,) now I won't have to dread doing the flower centers on this quilt. I still haven't gone for the Dogface suphur Butterfly's eyes yet, but I was so thrilled last night when I did 12 knots in 3 hours with no shoulder pain whatever. And this morning, no back pain. (upper, in tissue, typical of fibromyalgia.) I appreciate the help so much, koshergrl. Good quilters are not always good embroiderers. I haven't embroidered by hand very much in years, and have forgotten stuff I haven't dealt with in 3 or 4 decades like simple, pretty embroidery stitches. Thanks!

 

[freedombecki]

Also, padded satin stitch is a good way to create a round ball effect...

Obviously you could make it round instead of oval...

Embroidery Stitches

That is rather pretty. Thanks.

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks again to koshergrl for her kindly instructions when I was getting awful French knots that took forever and made my shoulders hurt all week in the past week. Today--no pain!

Day two, block three, the pink and creamy Virginia rosy maple moth (Dryocampa rubicunda) coloration of stamped butterfly:

Dryocampa rubicunda

For some reason, when I used the correct Latin name, this butterfly had almost exclusively yellow bodies. I will show another case in which an even yellower appearance was captured on camera--so much so it looks more like a plush toy for a child, not to mention it's a cutie pie:
​

And below is my progress, which consists of 8 flowers all around. The two on the bottom are from when I used two wraps of the needle rather than the three and four I was trying before, which were very difficult physically compared to the two wrap method. The two wraps made doing the knots much more of a joy. I'm glad I did the search and found the correct latin name, too. It made all the difference in looking up the Rosy maple moth. And it's ever so late. Have a great evening, everyone. ​

​

 

[freedombecki]

Heh! I missed the leaves in the lower left hand corner.

 

[koshergrl]

Lol..the beauty of handwork....

It really is beautiful.

 

[Sunshine]

[MENTION=21954]Sunshine[/MENTION], thanks for the inspiring read about the yellow butterfly.

Isn't it amazing how much is there that we don't see until someone opens our eyes to it! Years ago, a college professor I knew said that words are like that. We tend to work around words we don't know the meaning of and miss a lot. That was in a night class at the local junior college. The next week a classmate told of a new word he had discovered that week, 'tomes.' And he noted how frequently it had been used without h is understanding. From that day on I started looking up every single word I didn't know.

The story of the yellow butterfly was not new to me, I just didn't believe it until I saw the one after my sister's death. I Googled 'death and yellow butterfly' and found 'tomes' of information on it.

 

[freedombecki]

Goodness, I got bumped off here right in the middle of a post, and scanning the page, saw some Chinese lettering everywhere. I'll try again, although starting over a long post sucks! LOL!

Will explain later, got a set of 18 embroidered blocks on ebay auction, 3 to the inch stitches etc., but great to practice on for when the butterfly quilt is done. Here's a fraction of what arrived and my attempt to quilt a block with children on it, including the back, if it will only show up now. I don't know what went wrong, but had to clean scan my computer just now. I guess I'll show thumbnails. The picture from photobucket may have been just too much.

Note one of the unfinished blocks has a YELLOW BUTTERFLY!!!

Finally! Managed attachments is working again.