Butterfly Stitches – the book, released and ready to fly!

It’s here!

Yesterday was release day! I was teaching in Lockport so I’m a bit late to the party but I’m here now with my book, and I’d love to introduce you 🙂

That bright lime green cover is just a taste of the color inside. This book is not designed to be a shrinking violet on the shelf.

Should we take a look?

All the tips and tricks from my more than fifty years of hand stitching experience. (yes, I started stitching while I was still in my crib!)It’s not a stitch guide. I’m thinking you might need one of those if you want to try the fancier stitches. I do include detailed instructions for chain stitch and the embellishments I love to add. There are step by step pictures of my wool appliqué method. I really want Butterfly Stitches to be a useful book.

It’s not a quilt pattern book. I include a gallery for inspiration. There are ideas for including just one butterfly in a project or all twelve if you are ambitious!BUT it is a design book of twelve flying insects (they are not all butterflies!), drawn for hand embroidery and then refined and redrawn for wool appliqué.

Each full size design is accompanied by pictures of my finished stitcheries with details of the stitches I used.
The wool appliqué designs have cutting diagrams and placement pictures. Overlaps are built in for ease of use. You can copy the cutting diagram page onto sheets of freezer paper and get straight to work!

I’m pretty excited by the whole thing. I don’t often get very emotional these days so you will just have to take my word for it!

I have updated the backdrop in my Zoom room.The quilt on the right is new since the book. It’s made with the individual butterflies I stitched to go on the design pages, and  finished with a crazy quilt border that will be featured in a future season of QATV.

I switched out the shelf that I can see from my seat on set.Adding borders to a single design and stretching it over a canvas is one of my favorite ways to display the designs. I used fabric from Denise Burkitt‘s first range with Free Spirit on these pieces.

I still have a quilt I need to finish. The embroideries on the design page were stitched on hand dyed fabrics from my friend Tina at Turtle Hand Batiks and I have constructed a top including all the blocks. It’s still waiting to be quilted… any day now?

Now would also be a good time to mention the hand dyed perle cotton threads I used for all the embroidery. It will come as no surprise to many of you that I used House of Embroidery threads available from my friend Richard of Global Artisans… my favorites!

I have heard from a few of you who have already ordered the book. THANK YOU!!! I think it’s good value at $19.95. If you’d like one I’m sure your local quilt store would be delighted to order it for you. If that doesn’t work I do have an affiliate link for the Amazon store on this page. The mighty behemoth will get it to you in just a few days! (if you use the link I earn a few pennies from each purchase at no extra cost to you 🙂 )

Who would have thought back in January 2018 when I started my Year of Butterflies that there would be a book of butterflies? Dreams do come true!

Happy stitching everybody.