Realistic Thread Painting - Embroider a Butterfly

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Amanda. I'm a hand embroidery artists and I also run a website where I teach others how to handle breeder. My favorite technique and embroidery is thread painting, and I've been lucky enough to get featured in several magazines and publications such as Pop Sugar, country living and Southern Living. This class will teach you from start to finish how to embroider a realistic butterfly. Everything will be broken down into actionable steps so that you can competently learn the art of Fred painting. Let's get started. 2. Supplies You'll Need: For this class you'll need a couple of different things. Worked with the pattern and E7 inch embroidery hoop, but I have made the pattern for three different size tubes. Seven inches is gonna take you a long time. So if you are short on time or just don't want to commit to that long reproject. I have the central for 56 and chips as well. You'll need a pair of embroidery scissors. You'll need an embroidery needle. Recommend using one with a small eye on it. So you'll want a relatively small embroidery needle will only be using one to two strands of floss, so you don't need one with a large ie. And you'll also need some fabric. I use Coda cotton, that's one of my favorite fabrics to work on. If you don't have kinda cotton and other fabric that would be great is when are basically anything that has an even weave. And as a natural fabric, you'll also need some way to transfer your pattern. I recommend using super Salovey, which is a water-soluble stabilizer that you can trace your pattern directly onto. It's great to use. It doesn't tear easily. I use the medium weight super saw beef. The Salovey looks like this. It's translucent, so it's really easy to trace detailed patterns onto. And if you are tracing the pattern onto the fabric width, you're super savvy. You'll want some sort of permanent marker such as a micron. I like to use a micron because these don't bleed like Sharpies do, but you should test it out on whatever fabric color you're using before you get started. All of the colors that we'll be using for the embroidery are in the PDF file. I use DMC embroidery floss. This extreme cotton. 3. Long and Short Stitch: So before we get started on our project, I wanted to go over some of the basics of thread painting, which is basically the backbone of at all, which is the long and short stitch. So I'm just going to be using two colors, a lighter green and a darker green to show you how you can blend together colors when your thread painting. So a long and a short stitch is basically just streets images that are staggered long and short. And you can blend together colors that way. So I'm using this extra cotton floss and I just separated it out into one strand. So I'm just going to start with the lighter color. And I'm just going to make some stitches to show you what the long and short cij looks like. So you're going to come up through the fabric and you're just going to make autos, make a vertical stitch. And then I'm going to stagger another stitch. And I'm just going to be focusing. We're going to end up blending together the colors on this plane right here. So I'm not going to make the long and short stitch staggered at the very top here. I'm just going to do it on the bottom. And when you make these long and short stitches, they don't have to be long, short, long, short. And in fact they don't have to be the exact same length when they are short or long. It looks a lot better if you don't do that and you kind of just roll with it and make it kind of random because it basically makes it easier for it to look like colors are blending together. So let me zoom in a little bit so you can kind of see what these these stitches are doing. And I might go back through and fill in some of the gaps I left. All right. So I've got a good amount of that color. So now I'm just going to use the darker green and I'm going to use long and short stitches again and blends together these two colors. So when I end up blending these colors together, I'm not, I'm overlapping these stitches. I'm not really worried about being exact where if there's a long stitch here, it has to be a short stitch. You want all of us overlap because it will just kind of blend everything together a little bit better. So don't be super meticulous about it. You just kind of want to randomly do long and short stitches and see I'm kinda just going through those previous stitches to blend stuff together. And notice when I'm doing this, that if you want a super nice blend, you're going to want your stitches to be going in the same direction. So you don't want to be making a bunch of like random diagonal stitches because they're not going to sit together nicely. And it's going to be more obvious that you're, you've got two different colors that are just kind of just overlapping all over the place. So stitch direction is really important when you are painting. So I think that's blended together pretty nicely. But I'll just go back through and add a few other stitches here and there just to kind of give it an even softer blend. And that is what it looks like. So you can also use contrasting colors. You can use different colors. They don't have to be the same color, but just different shades. But if you're trying to kind of make something look like it's shaded in the same color but just like a darker shade. Then obviously you want to use two different, two green colors. But for the butterfly there are parts of it where we will be blending together blues and blacks like things like that. So you can pretty much been together whatever you want. But if you want a subtler blend, you want to pick colors that are somewhat similar but just slightly different shades that will help you to kind of make something look even softer when you blend it together. I also wanted to quickly show you the difference between using one strand and two strands of embroidery floss. I just went ahead and did some long and short stitches with two strands, each of each color. And I don't know if you can see as well on video, but the blend on the left is way more subtle and the blend on the right is more obvious. So that's why I prefer to use one strand. It does take longer to cover a smaller area, but I think it's worth it if you're trying to get the best, most subtle blends and the red paint things that look realistic. Because this just doesn't look as nice as this one. 4. Thread Painting Tips: I wanted to quickly go over a few tips to set you up for success. The first thing I recommend for thread painting is to invest in an embroidery floss, chert or card. This is because DMC Floss specifically has numbers for their colors, but not all of the numbers correspond in a numerical order. So this way you'll be able to see all of the available colours that they have. But also you'll be able to see which colors go together when you're trying to pick out certain colors for a project. The next tip that I have is to start simple and then add more detail as you go. Sometimes it can be easy to over-complicate things, especially when it comes to thread painting because it is somewhat complicated. But if you start with one color and add onto it, you can easily overlap your stitches and add more as you go. Embroidery as very forgiving in that way. This next tip is pretty crucial. You want to pay close attention to the direction of your stitches. You can use your stitches to accentuate an area or draw attention to it. But you can also use the direction of your stitches to release subtly blend colors together. This destruction in the ears of the dogs change and this draws attention to the direction the fur is going, as well as adding in some shadows for some more depth. This leads me into my next point which is accentuating shadows and highlights, IE adding contrast, adding subtle shadows to add a little bit more three-dimensional field to something, or adding white highlights, like in this photo of this cat will really make your embroidery pop. 5. Selecting Reference Photos: So this is the butterfly that we will be stitching in this class. I have it attached in the PDF file that you can download so that you can print it off and follow along and also use this image as a reference. I got this image off of unsplash.com, which is a royalty-free website where photographers will submit their high-quality photos, which is so awesome. They're free to use and I'm very thankful for it. And all of the images have, are very large file sizes. So they contain really high-definition photos. It's really important that you pick out a photo for reference that is true to color and is well lit, and also shows all the fine details of whatever subject you are stitching. If you don't have a good reference photo, you can only do what you see. And if you have a reference photo that's just not as accurate as what it should be, then your piece is just not going to turn out as nice. So I always tell people to be pretty picky about what reference images they use. Because it's definitely very important. And the first step to success when you are thread painting something and making something look as realistic as you possibly can. 6. Making the Stencil: So I normally design all of my centrals and procreate, but I understand that not everybody does have an iPad or Procreate. So I'm using my iPad more so as a lightbox for this. So what you'll need is a piece of paper or tracing paper and to print off the image that we'll be using. And we will just be basically making a central and marking out any sort of color changes and the general shape and just kind of making landmarks so that we know where we need to stitch, what colors and what patterns. So I have a piece of tracing paper here. Then I'm going to be using and I'll make sure my iPad is locked. And I'm just going to basically trace out the general shape of the butterfly and then go back in. And wherever I see any sort of changes in any sort of direction of stitches or colors. I'm going to go in and add fine detail and I'm just using a pencil for this. I also will attach this Denzel that I end up using in the PDF patterns that were both on the same page and you don't get lost wall where embroidering if you just want to print off the Central. But I did want to, I thought it was important to show you how you can create your own central for other projects. So I'm just going to go in first n mark out the general outline. And when you're adding in all these details, you'll kind of know what is going to confuse you and what isn't. So just kinda, I don't do I don't go in with like super crazy detail. I like to just get the general shapes and just note any sort of color changes. But if there's like ones that are super tiny, sometimes just having the general landmarks of some of these shapes right here. You know, these, I can see there's a little bit of color change right here, but I'm just gonna kinda leave it alone because that's just going to be like even more confusing. So as long as you have the general landmark of where you are, you can kind of go from there once you're actually stitching it. And what you can also do is, you know, if you're not sure what color something Was that you marked out? You can like put a letter for the color or whatever works for you. I don't normally mark any colors because I think it's easiest to just kinda try and go off of landmarks of where each shape that you drew is on the butterfly. But, you know, you just kinda have to create a system that's going to work for you and help you out to where you're not getting all lost and confused when you're stitching. So I'm just going to finish doing this dental and then I'll meet you back and show you how I transfer this pattern. So I have finished creating our stencil with some pencil. And now I'm going to take this super salty translucent stabilizer and my embroidery hoop. And I think it's easier to trace onto the stuff when it's in an embroidery hoop. So I'm just gonna go ahead and stick it in the embroidery hoop. It doesn't have to be like super, super tight in the hoop. Just enough to have it secure. And you just wanna make sure smoothed out. And I'll just place this face down onto my pattern. And then I will take my Micron and just go ahead and trace this on there. I would highly recommend using a micron to trace with this because I have use Sharpie before and it bleeds if you rinse it off on the fabric. So the biggest thing when you're using any sort of permanent marker on any sort of fabric. And even with the Micron, I went maybe just tests a little bit of this stabilizer on the kind of fabric you want to use. Make a mark with the micron, rinse it off, and make sure that it doesn't bleed before you start any sort of project because it would be such a bummer if you rinse it off in it bled and ruined your project. So I've tested it on the fabric I'm using. So I know it's okay for my fabric, but sometimes if you're using a lighter fabric, it can bleed. So just test it out first. So I'm going to just go ahead and trace this over and just trace the exact design that I have here. And then I will meet you back to kind of walk you through some of the basics of done painting. 7. Butterfly Body pt. 1: So now as these super exciting part and that is to get started, there are painting. So I went ahead and put my stencil on top of the fabric and then security in my embroidery hoop. And I'm all ready to go. You'll also want to have your reference image, pull it up on a computer or your tablet. Or you can also print it out so that you can reference the image because I'm not going to be having the image in this frame the entire time. But in order to get started, I want to go over a couple of things that we'll kinda help set you up for success. So I like to take a look at my reference image and kinda start planning out what I want to tackle first. And I personally like to start with the darkest colors first, and then I like to go from dark to light. I think that makes it easier to approach and it also helps with blending colors together. So we're going to start with the black. And I went ahead and threaded my needle. I have one strand of 3 10 which is black floss, it's DMC Floss. And I have all of the thread color choices I used for this project in the PDF file that you've probably already downloaded. It can be really overwhelming when you have a bunch of different colors in a piece. So I like to pick out a spot on this central and look at the image and figure out what the easiest part is to start out first. I think the oldest and the most obvious lines to start out with would either be the very center of the body of the butterfly. Or we could start on this lower wing where it's dark blue and then fades into black. I think that would be a good place to start as well. So I think I'm gonna go ahead and start at the all sorted the center of the body here. And then we will work our way out to the wing. So when I'm looking at the reference image, I can tell that this right here around the head is completely black. And then there's a couple of spots that have more of a gray tone down the middle of the body. And so I'm just kinda going to take note of that. You can also add markings in with a sharpie to kind of give yourself a little bit more detail. I like to start a little bit simpler, like I said in my centrals, but you can always add in things if you need to kind of make yourself a note or a landmark of where you're going to change colors. So I'm just gonna go ahead and do that now just for example sake. So the top here is all black. And then I'm going to add a little bit of gray right here. And then it looks like it's all black again. And I'm going to go probably about right here with black. And then this is going to be gray. And this is going to be black. I think it also helps to oversimplify things a little bit at first. So if there's a ton of different colors mixed in, you can always pack in color on one particular color and then go back through and add thread on top of the color, which is the really nice thing about embroidery. It's very forgiving in that way. So this is simple enough to where I'm just going to go ahead and start with the black and then I'll fill in the gray afterwards. So I'm going to start making some stitches. And the biggest thing with 3D painting too, is to not be too strict on yourself as to how you make your stitches. I think that if you're a little bit looser with the way you the length of your stitches, the way you overlap them, it looks a little bit more natural. So as you can see, I'm just kind of making a couple of stitches and then kinda going down even further and then overlapping those stitches to fill in that area. And I think it puts a little bit less stress on YouTube if you think that way. Because I know it's hard. Painting can be a little bit overwhelming sometimes, but there's a lot of the time it's really preference and there's not really that many rules. It's just whatever you find works for yourself. And you'll kinda get the hang of it as you go. And I'm just gonna go back up a little bit towards the tip here. And I think that top part of the head looks pretty good. And now I'm just going to bring down a couple of stitches here because this is where I'm going to start blending the gray in eventually. So I really want to have long and short stitches there so that I can blend those colors together nicely. So one thing I haven't touched on too much yet is the importance of stitch direction and making your stitches look nice and blended together. I touched on this a little bit when we went over the basics of the long and short stitch. But when you're actually applying it to a thread painting, it's important to take a look at the drawing or not the drawing, the reference image. And kind of figuring out what direction would make the most sense with a design. So if you're looking at the reference image of the butterfly, the, I think it would make most sense to work vertical stitches on the butterfly's body like we're doing here. Because that is kind of how the fibers of the butterfly look like. They look like they're running vertically and the black and gray fades into one another. And it wouldn't make as much sense to make horizontal stitches because you wouldn't be able to blend those two colors together. So when you look at a reference photo, just kinda keep in mind how you would execute it before you start stitching. And also if it's a for pattern or like I said, the fibers in the wing or the body of the butterfly. They'll normally kind of point you in the right direction. If you really take a look closely and try to decide which direction you'd like to go. So for this, we're just going to be doing vertical switches. But for the wings will change the direction up a bit and I'll kind of explain that as we go along. So I'm just going to continue to make some stitches on the body of the butterfly with this black, I'm just going to fill in where marked off where I want to fill in the black. And then I will show you how we can blend together some dark gray. So I went ahead and did the black on the body. And now I'm going to blend in some of this dark gray into the top right here. When I'm looking at the reference image, it looks like this spot on the top that is not filled in yet, looks more like a dark gray color. And this spot on the bottom almost looks like a grayish brown color. So I'm going to use two different colors for this. For the top here I'm going to be using 37, 99, which is a dark, almost like a dark bluish gray color. And then for the bottom, I'm going to be using 300 201, which is a dark grayish brown color. So I'm going to blend together these two pieces of black here was short and long stitches. And using the principles we've gone over, you want to make these as varied as possible and you can always go back through and add more stitches on top of the such as you make. But this is a pretty subtle color change on the butterfly, so you don't want it to be super obvious. Which is why I wanted to use a pretty dark color so it's not super contrasting. So once you've covered the area, you can take a look at it and see if you like the way it's blended out. If you don't, you can also go back in and add a couple more long and short stitches to make the blend a little bit softer. I'm going to add one more stitch on the side here and then I think I'm pretty happy with that. Yeah. I think I'm pretty happy with the way that looks. So now I'm going to go ahead and take my 300 to one, the dark grayish brown and do the same thing on the lower portion of the body. And this is a larger area. So I'm not going to be able to just do one row of warming short such as for this. So I'm just gonna kinda go and do a couple of shorter stitches. Blending together. The black right here. And then all kinda keep working my way down to blend together the little group of stitches I have down here. So I like the way this bottom blend looks, but I don't really like the way at the top looks. So I'm gonna go back in and add a couple of stitches just to make it a little bit more subtle. And then I'm pretty happy with the way the start of this butterfly is looking. There's more detail than what I've put on here so far. But what I like to do is start with bite-size pieces and like break everything up into sections and lay down the basics, and then go back in and add more detail as I go. I think that helps to kind of combat any overwhelm. And like I said, embroidery is a pretty forgiving medium, especially if you're only using one strand, you can go back over these stitches if you need to, if you don't like a color or if you think that there's more detail you want to add. And when I'm looking at the reference image, it looks like there's a little bit of almost like hair on top of the body here. And also down here there's little wispy parts. But I'm not going to do that yet because they kind of come from over here. So I'm just going to kind of lay down the basic colors I see and then add back in little things like that, which will really make everything pop. But we're just going to start with the basics and worry about that later. 8. Butterfly Body pt. 2: So the next part of the body is a little bit of yellow right here. And it looks like it's a dark yellow, a little bit darker than what's in the wings, which is a pale yellow. So I've chosen color 3820 to use for this. And I'm just going to be creating some stitches down these markings I made right here to fill in the rest of the body. And I'm not, I'm going to leave the very top of the head alone because it almost looks like it's another shade darker and it's almost like a yellowish brown color at the very top. So I'm just gonna kinda start right below the eye here on both sides and then I'll blend in the brown leader. But I'm just going to fill in these little side pieces right here with the golden yellow color. And again, There's a bunch of fuzzy looking hair-like fibers right here. But I'm going to start with just vertical stitches. And later on I'll add in some of those fuzzy stitches with a lighter color to add some more texture to it. So I quickly wanted to zoom in and show you the stitch direction in its importance. So I started with vertical such as up here. And then I slowly started to angle them out just a little bit because on the, on the reference image, it looks like some of the wispy fiber like hairs kind of run that way. So I went ahead and started slightly turning the stitches that way and I'll do it on the other side too. So these down here where diagonal and then these up here where vertical stitches. So I'm just going to continue doing that and then we'll be done with the majority of the body. So I quickly wanted to show you how a secure stitches in the back because I figured out it was worth mentioning. I don't mind using knots in the back of my embroidery because I'm only using one strand of embroidery floss. So I don't really feel like it leaves any sort of bumps in the fabric. However, if you don't like to do that, you can also go ahead and thread the tail of your embroidery floss and then just tuck it underneath your stitches. You already make. Either way works and it's just up to purely preference. So right about here on the other side is where I started to kind of slant the stitches a little bit. So I'm going to start doing that on this side to just slightly. It doesn't have to be super dramatic. But as you can see, they're a little bit more diagonal and they kind of contour the tapering of the body right here. So I'm just going to continue to make some stitches like that. So now we want to go ahead and embroider the head. And I'm going to start with the darkest color again, which is the eyeballs. And it looks like the eyes are black, but they have a little bit of a highlight on them. So I'm gonna go in with black first and then I'm going to kind of overlap the stitches and add some gray tones to them so that they look a little bit more three-dimensional. But they're so tiny that I'm going to basically just stitch the eye wall to wall with black. I think it'll just be easiest that way. And then I will go back in with a few little stitches of gray on top of that black. And it looks like the light is hitting them from above. So the black is going to be on the top and then this right here at the bottom will be black. So obviously, when you are embroidering these, you'll want to stitch them in the direction that you want to blend the color out too. So I'm stitching them relatively vertical so that I can add a couple of stitches to blend the gray color on top. And general rule of thumb with using colors and different shades, obviously shout, shadows are going to be darker, so you're going to want to use darker colors and highlights will be lighter. Hence, you'll use lighter colors. So now I'm going to go in with 37, 99 again, which is that dark gray color. And I'm just going to add a couple of stitches to the top of the eyes. And it's pretty subtle, It's not super obvious, but I do think it adds a little bit of 3-dimension to the eyeballs. You can also, if you're not satisfied with the way this looks, you can go in with an even lighter gray. But in the photograph it looks pretty subtle. So I think I'm happy with that. So for the rest of the head, like I had said before, I wanted to use a little bit of a darker color. I'm going to be using 832, which is basically a yellowish brown color and it's slightly darker than this yellow we used for the body. So I'm just going to start from where our stitches ended. So I can kind of blend the colors together a little bit. And I'm again going to be making pretty much vertical stitches for this. And as you can see, there's really not much of a difference between these colors. It's very slight. I didn't want it to be super obvious. But you can definitely tell that it's a little bit darker, which is what I wanted. All right. So the head is pretty much done. But I didn't notice when I was teaching that. That the very top of the head here has a little bit more defined black tip on it. Then what I have embroidered. So I'm going to add in a couple more stitches on the top here to define that just a little bit more. And while we're using the black thread, I'm going to go ahead and switch the antennas as well. With these, you can either do one straight stitch like this for them or you can. I like to do things like a stem cell niche. I don't think that a backstitch would look that great because you'll see the seam lines of your stitches and it won't look as realistic. But sometimes when I do longer stitches like I just did when you rinse off the central stencil, they can loosen. So I like to try and keep my stitches a little bit shorter than map. So I'm going to take this out and then I will do a stem stitch. So this is not a long-run, short cij, but a stem sich. And if you're familiar with hand embroidery stitches, it is one of the most common ones you can use. And it basically forms kind of a rope-like stitch. Cool. And then for the top here I'm just going to make a couple of stitches for the rounder part of the antenna. 9. Upper Wing pt. 1: I'm done with the head and the body of the butterfly. And now I think it makes sense to just work our way outs from where we've started to the wings. So I'm going to walk you guys through how to do one entire side of the butterfly. And then I will leave the other side for you to give it a shot yourself and see if you can continue to replicate the other side. So the first thing that I want to do is kind of bring out a little bit more of this dark, darker, brownish, yellow color onto the wing and then kind of faded into this brown color that it looks like right around this area. And there's a lot of detail in the center here, more so than even in the wing really. This is probably going to be one of the more difficult parts of it because there's a bunch of spots and a lot of blending going on. But I'm going to kind of leave the spots alone until we kind of get to this part of the wing. First, I just want to again layouts and color and then blend a little bit of the golden yellow into the brown. And then we can go back through and add some of those little speckles that you see in the wing. So first I'm just going to go ahead and start stitching some of this yellow color. And this is where you really want to pay close attention to your stitch direction. Because it looks like I'm going to keep these relatively straight right here. But shortly after that, I'm going to start making stitches pointing this way. Because if you see in the veins of the wing, it looks like you're going to want to directors stitches out the length of the wing. So you just kinda want to keep that in the back of your mind as you're stitching. And don't get too far along without kinda double-checking where you're at and how you want to position your stitches. And by the way, this color again is 832. So it looks like I'm going to add a couple of stitches here. And this is not a super exact science. You can also go back in and really kinda try to match up your photo with your embroidery if you feel like you're getting a little bit lost and go back through with another color if you feel like you didn't quite get it right. But I'm just kind of estimating where this gold kind of fades out. And it looks like it's about right here. So I'm gonna do this. And then I'm gonna go in with a dark brown color. I think that's enough for now. So now I'm going to go in with the 300 to one color, which is that kind of brownish gray color. And I'm going to start blending these two together. This is where you're going to want to be really loose with it because obviously these colors are not super similar. So in order to make it look natural, you don't want to block it out. You just kinda want to do super varied long and short stitches. So I'll show you it looks like on the separation of the top wing and the bottom wing, there is kind of a bold, darker brown line right here. So I'm going to make a couple of stitches and just going to kind of blend them up into the golden stitches here. Like that. And then it looks like this kind of fades into this right here too. So again, I'm just making long and short stitches going the same direction but slightly diagonal now out towards the wing. Just like that. And it looks like I'm going to add a little bit of black in of unruly to really define this area right here, it looks like it has a little bit of black in it. But for now, I'm literally going to just fill this entire area in with this brown. And then I'm going to add back in a little bit of detail once we've kind of color blocked it out, I think that's the easiest way to approach this. So I'm continuing to work these stitches pretty much in the same direction as we got started. But from the reference photo, it looks like the stitches are going to need to go kind of back down towards the direction that the body is going. Kinda how we did these ditches, you're gonna kinda curve around a little bit because the bottom here, the fibers kinda look like they start to go more vertical again and not at a slant because you're going to be kind of running the direction the wing goes. If that makes sense, it can be kind of hard to explain. But I'm going to kinda show you as I do it. So you can kinda see how I'm changing the stick steps direction. So I'm going to start to kind of change the direction slightly. And they're going to start to become a little bit more vertical here. As you can see, they're getting straighter now. And then they'll kinda just run the contour of the body here. In the reason I'm doing this is because it looks like that's what happens in the reference photo. But it also sets you up to where you can blend out the colors better because this dark brown blends into a pale yellow color. And it will blend out right here into this area. And I think it'll be easier to blend it out the right way. Your stitches are going the right direction. You kinda just always have to be thinking about if you need to blend out colors, which way would be the smartest way to make your stitches? So I'm going to finish filling in this mark right here with the dark brown and then I'll meet you back and we'll go over how to add different colors in details back into it so it doesn't just look like a solid brown square. All right. So I went ahead and just filled in this area here. And now I'm going to go back in and add some detail to it. So as we look at the reference photo, it looks like there's some speckling right here and kinda down through here. So I'm going to add some extra stitches on top of these stitches we just made. And I'm going to make some super short stitches to add some speckling in. And I want them to be super short and if they kind of sink in between the stitches, that's totally fine too because you don't want them to be super-large are obvious. Or just want to add a little bit of speckles there. And if you feel like you need to add a couple more of the longer stitches towards the center of the body here. You can also do that. But I'm just going to add a couple of these. And I'm going the exact same direction as the stitches I made. But you can also, if you're trying to make them more prominent looking, you could also make them across the stitches instead of width the stitches. But I think it's appropriate to just kind of make them along the same plane as the other stitches. That way they're not super super obvious and they don't have to be exact. I'm just kind of looking at the image and kinda making stitches in that general area. And you can make as many as you feel like you want to make until you're happy with the way it looks. Kinda looks like there's more yellow right here. So I'm going to add a couple of stitches there. On top of the brown. All right, so I'm going to continue doing this and then we will add some black into the wing right around here in a second. All right, so now I'm going to add a couple of stitches rate or long here of the black and I don't think it needs too much, just a little bit and that will kind of contour the wing into the body a little bit more and add a little bit more depth to it. And it looks like you're kinda fades out towards the bottom here. Let me make a couple of stitches and I think that'll look good. Yeah. I'll the final detail I want to add around this area right here is some of those little wispy fibers. And I'm going to be using two different colors for that. I'm going to be using the 832 color that we've been using, that golden brown color. And then I'm also going to be using kind of a lighter gray brown color, 37, 87. And I'm just going to add a couple of stitches along here to kind of add a little bit of texture. So I'm going to start out with the lighter color, which is the 832. And I'm just going to make a couple of stitches. You don't have to be super precise about this, but I'm just going to make a couple of here and there. Because after that I'm going to add in a couple of stitches of this 37, 87 color. I think this will be good because from the reference image it looks like it kind of the fibers kind of fade into that darker brown color. So I'm just going to add a couple of stitches above this here to kind of fade it in. And I'm gonna go on top of those a little bit to. This just adds a little bit more depth to it and makes it look a little bit more realistic when you add different highlights and different textures and details to it. So I think I'm going to add a couple towards the base here. And that'll probably be it for that. And then I'm going to go back in and add a couple of those little wispy to the body with 832 again. And this is just kind of trial and error. If you don't like something, you can take it out or go over it. But this is just kinda how I work. I tend to do one area and kinda focus on the basics and then add detail in once I feel like I'm done with the basic parts of that area and I just kind of build off of everything. So these are the little wispy parts trying to make them look as fine as I can, but can only get so thin with your Sharad. Think I'm happy with that. It looks a little bit more free. 10. Upper Wing pt. 2: All right. So the next portion of the wing I'm going to be working on is right here, which is the speckled portion. This one is a little bit more obvious of speckling then what we added in a couple of spots here and there. There's two ways you could approach this. You could either go in with either yellow or black and just pack it full and then go back in and add the speckling. But it's so dense that I think it might look better to just kind of scatter, make short stitches and scatter some stitches in yellow and then add back in stitches and black. And you can kind of just balance it out that way. I think this would be the best approach for this part portion. So I'm going to be going in with the color 30 seven. And I'm going to make some short stitches all in this area. And then we'll go back in and fill in the rest with black. And this is one of those things where you're probably going to have to kinda alternate between the two until you're happy with the way it looks. So I'm just going to make super short stitches and leave spaces in between because I'm going to be adding in some other citizen black here in there. But you don't have to worry about being super uniform or leaving too many gaps because you can always overlap the stitches and go back over them the way you'd like. So I'm just gonna kinda make short stitches like this through the entire area. And then if you want to do this as well, we can meet back and fill it in with black in a little while. And also before I go, I'm making these stitches run along the line of the plane that the wing is going, as you can see. So just pay attention to the direction you're making your stitches. All right. So I filled in this area with some stitches and like I said, I'll probably fill it down a little bit more once we put the black end. But now I'm going to go back in with three 10, which is black. And I'm just going to scatter the stitches around so that it looks kinda speckled. So I'm going to try and fill in the gaps I left with black and kind of create a speckled book. And I'm going to try and really focus on making these ditches pretty small. Because I feel like the black is obviously going to stand out a lot more. So I'm just going to try and pay attention to the stitch length a little bit more on these. And I think that I might go in with a third color because I think some of these speckles are not quite black. I think it'll soften this up a little bit and not make it look as harsh if I add in a third color. So I think I'm going to use one of those like grayish brown colors to fill in a couple of these spaces as well. So I'm going to keep working on these. And you can keep working on yours. And if you want to pause this video and we can reconvene to add in that third color. I'm going to be softening this up a little bit now and adding in a third color, I'm going to be using 3787, which is kind of a grayish brown color. And I'm just gonna go back in and kind of speckle this in more. And then we'll see where we're at. I finished stitching some of that brown gray color in there and I'm pretty happy with the texture and the way it looks. So I think I'm going to keep it the way it is. Now. I'm going to kind of fade in some black right here and right here. And just kind of finish this portion of the wing off. So from the reference image, This pretty much turns into a solid black stripe right here on the wing. And then there's a little bit of black that borders this speckled part. So I'm going to stitch that as well. I've pretty much finished this portion. I'm going to leave this right here alone because I'm going to be adding in yellow first and then outlining this in black. But I think the next thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to start stitching the black portions of this upper wing. And when I do this, I'm going to go ahead and use two strands of black thread because these are pretty much just solid black spots and you'll cover a little bit more ground more quickly if you're using two strands. I'm working this embroidery and a seven inch hoop. So it's a pretty big butterfly design. If you feel like working with two strands makes it too difficult. And it's harder to work in detail. And you're working in a smaller hoop, then you can continue to use one strand. But I'm just going to go ahead and start stitching with two strands, these solid black portions of the wing. And again, I'm just making my switch directions go along with the curvature and length of the butterfly wing. I did want to quickly mention something. So with the black, as you can see with the reference photo, There's not a ton of blending happening between the yellow and the black. So you can keep these stitches relatively even. You'll be making yellow stitches that kind of but up against the black stitches, but you're not going to have to blend them out too much. So when you're filling in this area, you can keep them relatively neat to wherever the outline is. You don't have to worry about doing like super long or dramatic long and short stitches to blend this in a finished with the black. And now I want to do some of these vein lines here. These are super, super light and they're not black if you look at the reference image. So I'm going to be using 832 again, which is that kind of gold color to do these three lines right here. And then there was one other line right here that I'm going to be using a different color for it because it's a little bit darker. So I just want to mark these out before I get started with the yellow because I think once you get started filling all of this in, it's going to be hard to remember or see your lines that you have on your central. So I wanted to do these first two, just kind of mark them out. And if they're not perfect, that's totally fine. You can kind of stitch over them and kind of rework them as you go. But I'm just going to do some short stitches to kinda mark out these lines. And there's like a little bit of almost like a grayish color at the very top right here on all of them. Then I'm going to do is I'm going to leave that alone as well. And I'll show you what I'll do in a moment for that. But for the lines, I'm just going to use these colors. And like I said, they don't have to be perfect. It's just more making a mark for yourself. Also, I think I may have made this line and errors. I'm going to leave that alone because I've kinda referred back to my image and that's not quite what I wanted. So now I'm going to be using 645, which is a gray color to do this line and also to kind of fill in the top of the vein lines right here where it gets a little bit thicker. Okay. 11. Upper Wing pt. 3: I have taken a look at the reference image and picked out some colors that I think will look good in the wings. The color changes are super subtle in the reference image. So I wanted to keep it pretty simple. Sometimes if you pick too many colors, you can get kinda lost. So I just chose these two colors right here, which is 744 and 1973. The saturated yellow 973, I'm going to be putting in the wing down here. And then the more pale yellow will be in this part of the wing up here. And then there's a spot right here. I'm going to leave alone because I think I'm going to pick a little bit darker of a color, but everything else, I'm going to be using what these two colors. I like to start out with a pretty simple color palettes and then build off of them if you've kinda noticed so far, I think it's a lot easier to keep track of everything. And you can always go back over something or blend more colors in if you feel like it doesn't look quite right or if it looks too flat. So I'm going to get started with 744. And I'm going to start stitching the wing pattern here. So the most important part to really blend this nicely, you don't have to blend the long and short stitches a lot for the wing as we talked about before. But you can see in the reference image that the borders of lines between the black and the yellow are kinda jag in. So you don't want to have it super perfect because it's going to look to NAEP and you also don't want to be stitching so neat that you have seen lines in your embroidery. So you definitely want to make sure that you are stitching through your previous stitches. You just don't have to blend it out as dramatically as when you did in the center of the butterfly here. So the other thing that you want to keep track of is this destruction that you're going in. And you want to follow the stitch direction that you have started with this pattern of the black switches and the switches over here. So these two right here will be pretty much horizontal going across the wing. And then when you start working down into the wings here, obviously these stitches are more vertical stitches. So you want to follow the lines that you've already created and that will help to keep your embroidery looking neat. So I'm going to start up in this area right here. And I will kind of show you how I will blend this out. So I like to kinda lay a couple of stitches down first. And you don't want to make the stitches to even, especially on this one, you can kinda see the yellow kind of has an irregular border with the black on both sides. And so I'm going to pull a couple of these stitches down into the black a little bit more. So now all that's left are these right here to do? These are generally all going in the same direction step-wise. So you're going to want to stitch them and the same direction of the lines that are running through the leaf basically. So if you want to pause this video and fill in this area, you don't need to blend the colors out as much as you did up here because it doesn't look like the colors blend together as much. So you just kinda have to focus on filling in that area and just make sure that your embroidery looks smooth and your search directions are uniform. If finished filling in this area right here. And now I want to add in the yellow that is kind of running alongside the wing right here. So I'm going to be using the color 973 at the beginning of the wing to about midway down. And then I'm going to transfer it to the other color, which is 744. Because in the reference photo it looks like it's a little bit more saturated up here. And then I'll finish it by adding some black along the outline of that wing. So I'm just going to be doing some long and short stitches again. And I'm just going to make a pretty thin line of this. It doesn't need to be super thick. I'm going to work my way down. And then I will fill in the rest down here in these colors have in 45. All right, and now I'm going to go in with black and just outline the edge of that wing and fill in any wines that I feel like I need to fill in. So it looks like there is a little one right there that are masked. Thin line right here. All right, so I'm happy with the way the top of this wing looks. And now I'm going to fill in these little pieces right here on the bottom of the upper wing. And I'm going to be using 1973, which is that more saturated yellow color. And I'm just going to fill it in the same exact way that I did these up here. They're going to be following the green line or the direction of the black. So it's going to be basically at a slight diagonal running alongside the direction that the wing is going. And I'm just going to go ahead and stitch this in. Again. You don't have to blend this in very much because the image doesn't look like the yellow and the black blend in at all. It just kinda looks like yellow shapes that stand out. So I'm going to be switching into the black stitches slightly just so that my stitches are nice and smooth and there's no seam lines in between the black and the yellow. But you don't really need a blend these out much. I have finished these darker yellow pieces here. And now I want to fill in this area right here. And I'm going to be using 832 because it appears to be slightly darker than the pale yellow in the wing. So I'm just gonna go ahead and fill that in. And then I might kind of speckle in a little bit of black in this as well. Alright, so now I'm going to grab some black thread and just kinda speckle in a little bit of black. So now is the time where I just kind of add in even more detail or fix anything, but I feel like it needs fixing. So at first glance, I know from the reference image that there's a little bit of yellow, the tip of this wing. So I'm gonna go ahead and add a little bit of the 973 into that part of the wing. And then the other thing that I want to do is add even more black into this speckled area because I'm looking at it and I feel like there's too much of that gray and yellow and not enough of the black compared to the image. So I'm gonna go back and add in that detail. And you can go ahead and inspect yours and decide what you need to fix on yours as well. And then I'll meet you to start the bottom portion of the wing. 12. Lower Wing + Finish Your Project: All right, I am super happy with the way this is looking so far. This does not have to be the end-all, be-all of how it's going to look. But I like to try and go in as much as I can with the detail I noticed that needs to be added. And I think it's looking really good so far. So now I wanted to move on to the lower wing here. And I wanted to kinda challenge you to try and do the pale yellow and the black and more saturated yellow by yourself. I would recommend doing the pale yellow up in the upper portion of the wing and then using the more saturated yellow on the lower portion of the wing. And then go ahead and also do the black. I would do the black first and then do the yellow. And you'll just want to be mindful of leaving these right here open for the blue and the red. And I would say, make sure that you are really dragging out your long and short stitches into these little shapes because the black really fades into the blue. So just be mindful about when you're doing the black. But everywhere else you can pretty much just pack black and yellow into this lower portion of the wing. So go ahead and unpause the video and I'm going to get started on this as well. And let's see how we do when we come back. I have finished up filling in the yellow and black into the bottom of this wing here. And I went ahead and added a few other details as well. So if you haven't added some of these details, these are just suggestions that you can add in too. So I went ahead and added a little bit of 832 around the division between the upper and lower wing, there was a little bit of a shadow in the reference photo. So I went ahead and added that in the, it kind of naturally divides the two wings. And then I also added in some 832 into where we had the dark brown color to kind of fade in to the body and around the body. So I did that and then I also added in a little bit of 645 into this seam line right here of the wing and then right here, right above the black mark. I went ahead and added that. So it just adds a little bit more soft details into it. So if you want to add that and you can go ahead and add that in. Otherwise, I'm going to get started on the blue and red spots on the wing. So first I'm going to get started on the blue. And I have chosen 7973840 for the blue. I'm going to basically stitch the dark blue on the base of these shapes and then fade it into this light blue. So I'm gonna go ahead and start making stitches going the same direction that I made the black stitches. And I'm going to leave a little bit at the top to fade in the lighter blue color. And I think that color works nicely. It's pretty subtle. When I'm stitching. Now I'm going to use color 8, 17 for this spot right here. So we are nearing the end of the first half of the butterfly. But I did want to add in a few different details. On top of what we've already added. So there is some furry fibers around the body of the butterfly. So I wanted to go in with a lighter color and add some of those fibers to really add a lot more of a realistic look to this. And then there's also some speckling and the wing that I never got around to doing when we first went over the first the top wing. So I was going to go ahead and add the speckles in for that. So I'm going to be using a little bit of a darker color for this because it's not as noticeable and I don't want it to be super obvious. So I'm going to be using 830, which is a darker brown color. So I'm just going to go ahead and add in some of those speckles. And you can just kinda out in as much as you want or leave it, whatever works. But I'm just gonna kinda go down this black portion of the wing here and just add in some of this. I'm pretty happy with what I've added in there and wanted to be super subtle, nothing crazy. So I think I'm happy with the way that looks. So now I'm going to go in with a lighter golden color, 1834. And I'm going to add in a couple of hair fibers are right around this area. And I think I'm going to try and make these not go completely in the same direction as the previous stitches because I want them to look like they kind of popping off the fabric. This is also a way that you can really utilize such direction because it will kinda emphasize layers or kind of draw more attention to these fibers are these threads. And I'm not going super far off of the subtraction just a little bit. Just overlapping over top of those stitches. I added a couple of stitches with that same color down here to kind of accentuate the such as we had made initially. And I think I'm pretty happy with the way this half of the butterflies looking. So my challenge to you now is to try and do the other half of the butterfly by yourself. This is basically exactly symmetrical. So you should be able to replicate what we went over in this class onto the other half of the butterfly. And I wish you guys luck and hope that this class was helpful. Thanks so much.