My Work on Florence's Tone on Tone block and Kiko Flowers

The Tone on Tone Round Robin was organised by the Australian and New Zealand Southern Cross Crazies group. This block was a difficult colour for me to work with, especially keeping within the limits of the tone on tone.  For the first time I tried out Kiko flowers and I'm hooked on them.  From now on, there will be Kiko Flowers everywhere. I covered four seams, one with an embroidered motif which I got from Flights of Fancy ages ago and thought that I would never have a use for those muted tones and when Florence's block arrived, I knew I had found the perfect place for that motif. On another seam I used a piece of hand-dyed sparkly ric-rac braid with additional stitching on either side and I tizzied up Florence's scalloped lace with chain stitch, sequins, beads and detached chains.  My favourite seam was the Kiko Flowers and lazy daisy leaves which were darker than I would have done but I felt that I had to balance up with Sue's embroidery which was already on the right hand side of the block.

Step-By-Step How-to for the Butterfly seam

1.  Work a single fly stitch about 3/8inch on either side of the anchoring thread in the centre. Take the anchoring thread down just on the other side of the thread.

2. Work a second smaller fly stitch about 1/8 inch down from the first with each side being about 1/4 inch.

3. Work an upside-down fly stitch coming up to join the other two and take the anchoring stitch up over all three fly stitches.

4. Join the ends of the fly stitches with straight stitches to form wings.

5. With a thicker thread or a bullion stitch make the body in the centre of the wings.

6. With a fine thread sew two straight stitch antennai and work five small blanket stitches down the side of each wing.

7. Leave a gap of about 1/2 inch between the wings - ignore the body - and repeat the butterflies along the length of the seam.

Cream on Cream Block 13 finished

The apples in the centre of this block reminded me of high Summer, which means butterflies, dragonflies, bees and flowers. This was a quick and easy block to do probably because of the Summer theme and once the butterflies were stitched in place, it was just a matter of covering the seams.  One seam treatment was a row of tiny butterflies in cream thread with gold bodies and gold antennai and wing tips.  I made the stitch combination up as I went along then I thought maybe other people might like to use it as well so my next blog entry will be a step-by-step how-to on the butterfly seam......I don't know how it will look in colour but it looks fine in cream and gold.