I wish I had been able to talk to my grandmother about the planning of this square. It’s part of my award-winning piece – Grandma’s Butterflies, done in her honor. It was by far the most complicated piece I have done to date. I think she would have loved thinking through how the various layers would need to be constructed. Weaving is very mathematical and requires planning ahead of time to form the pattern of the fabric. A weaver must warp their loom before they can begin weaving. The layers of resists were my warp and the prefelts were my wefts. I think my grandmother would have understood my metaphorical loom. I can see her, with her glasses lifted, staring in intrigue at the wing patterns. I embroidered the wing patterns just for her.  She would have also enjoyed the soft touch of the silk butterflies. To just look at a fiber arts piece is not fully appreciating its beauty. It is as much about how it feels and its texture as it is visual. She taught me that since I was a small child.  

I was relieved that for this square, I did not have to fix any silk sticking problems like I had for last week’s post – Pink Silk Butterflies. However, I did have to spend a lot of time thinking through the formation of the piece. For my final project for Fiona Duthie’s online Surface Design class, I had to submit a proposal on how I would demonstrate the various techniques studied. I wanted something to rise above the base. Fiona Duthie challenged me to use the prefelt-raised technique as a method to raise the butterflies off the square. With that challenge I explored layout options for the butterflies. You may have seen these posted on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest this week. If you missed it the pictures are above. For this square and the pink butterflies square I was able to do a sample to test out the technique as part of the class participation. Being able to have that time before attempting this was key to its success. As you know, I chose the double butterfly over the singular butterfly from looking at the final piece.

Square As A Whole 

I used the surface design technique – prefelt-raised to give the dramatic feel of butterflies flying out of the square. This technique is challenging and requires a lot of planning and preparation ahead of time. You need to ponder out how you are going to place your resists. As in this case, you have four layers that need to be felted simultaneously – as a whole and individual layers of the butterflies. To start I laid out four layers of commercially mixed gray merino wool for the base and laid on top a trio of two-layered butterflies. As you lay the two-layered butterflies you need to place three resists. You can see the layers in the pictures below. To attach them to the base you need to felt the body of the butterfly to the base of the square. I made sure to pay a lot of attention to the body of the butterfly because I wanted to ensure the three layers of prefelt and base came together. I also used a hand powered sander to really make sure the layers came together.

Construction of the Butterflies

What makes this square stand out against the other squares is that I needed to make the prefelts in advance. During my class with Fiona Duthie I made a series of silk prefelts. I combined a full layer of tussah silk on top of a layer of wool creating a dense silk surface. After the prefelt dried I was able to cut six butterflies out of them. I used the same butterfly stencil as the other squares to keep all the butterflies in sync across squares. When I created the prefelts I didn’t know I was going to use them for this part of the project, but I knew I would use it for something in my final piece. Also, for this square I elaborated some by creating a surface stitch pattern on the wings. These butterflies looked beautiful when they were done. That is why I love the surface alteration technique of surface stitching. I used various embroidery stitches on each butterfly so they would have their own character. I used non superwash fingering weight yarn to embroider a pattern onto the butterflies that felted into the wing as if it was always there.

The top right butterfly was made from pink dyed tussah silk layered on top of pink merino wool. I used the same blue fingering weight non superwash wool yarn from the Pink Silk Butterflies’ square for its stitching. Using a running stitch, I outlined the wings and added three French knots on top and one French knot on the bottom of each wing.

The butterfly to the bottom was made from blue dyed tussah silk on top of a layer of blue merino wool. This time I used the contrasting pink fingering weight non superwash wool yarn for its stitching. I used the same pattern of stitching as the pink butterfly above, but only used one French knot on top and one on bottom to keep them with different patterns. A classmate of mine had used the French knot in one of her samples and I just loved the effect. Still do. Unfortunately, I don’t find them easy to do but I really like the result.

The final butterfly to the top left is in the same color family as its partner to the right. This butterfly was made from dyed ruspberry tussah silk on top of a layer of salmon colored merino wool. I then contrasted the dark pink of the wing with a gray fingering weight non superwash wool yarn for its stitching. This time only using a running stitch for the outline. This pattern had the base color of grey to be its color distinction against the ruspberry dyed silk.

With all the butterflies and their resists in place I felted and fulled the square carefully. I stopped between every roll to make sure the resists where correctly in place. I didn’t want to have to try separate the wings later. After it was fulled I left it to dry overnight but I had to keep shaping it as it dried. It was like I had just had a baby because I was up every hour folding them. I did eventually have to go to sleep but you don’t have to worry too much because you have many hours of shaping to go before its done.

Right before I shipped the pieces home to Buffalo for the show, I steamed it. I found that seaming it helped with the folds of the wings. In fact, I wanted to spread the wings out a little when I saw it hanging at the exhibit, but someone yelled to not touch it. My attempt to touch the piece was a bad example to gallery goers. Even though it was my piece you don’t want others touching the display. But for that momentary frustration it still displayed beautifully.

Housekeeping

This is the second of four installments on the individual squares to my award-winning piece – Grandma’s Butterflies. They are being released in the order they were created. Last week’s post was about the first square - Pink Silk Butterflies. Next week I release - Darkened Butterflies - my third square. More stories on issues with silk but don’t worry it all works out! Great demonstration of effecting color through the placement of black gauze on top of pink inclusions and a gray base. Check back next week to get the story behind the square.

Make sure to follow me on Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram to get my behind-the-scenes posts that take you into my studio. Also, please leave comments or questions below or on any of my social media channels. I want to hear from you and get a discussion going.