Historical Sampler – Another Butterfly

This butterfly is from http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/bookbindings/FullImage.aspx?&ImageId=ImageId=40799&Copyright=BL

Mary Corbet ventured a cautious opinion that it may have been done in trellis stitch, in the Plymouth style, but can’t see it in enough detail.

I’m doing it in trellis stitch anyway, since that’s the stitch I want to work with atm.

Note the hole where one of the spots on the wings has come out.

Somewhere (and I wish I could remember where), I read that such spots were sometimes done on a seperate piece of ground then carefully cut out and attached, and then stitched around. Given the deep whole remaining, it looks like this method was used here.

My butterfly is too small to do this with. I was all set to do it, but common sense prevailed. I’ll just do large French Knots.

Here he is, shown at about twice real size :

The wing shape is a bit different of course. They will start looking a lot more similar once the dark blue edging is put in. (I’ll do that in split stitch with several threads)

I did choose muddier colours than in the original. The Elizabethans used a lot of muddy (sallow) colours. I thought I’d show a representation of them here, in amongst all  the bright colours.

I’ve actually done a study on the colours used by the Elizabethans, and it’ll show up here in the blog once it gets some graphics processing done on it.

I was tossing up whether to do the body in gold in Ceylon stitch or follow the original image. I’ve decided to follow the original image, with it’s small sections of colours.

My trellis stitching is pretty terrible – I’ll get better as I go along.

I use my doodle cloth to learn a stitch, but not to practise it. I don’t mind if the stitching in my sampler shows a progression of skill as I go along – I am a beginner, and it’s whole point is to teach me the stitches. I’m not very good at doing 'boring’ practice, anyway.

Here’s the whole sampler again – a bit less fuzzy, but still with light reflection off the gold.

I tried sticking it in my scanner, but it wouldn’t fit.