Green Butterfly Lady - Part One

After making the Northwest Garden Lady art quilt, I decided to make 2 more green lady art quilts.  I LOVE LIME GREEN!  If you've been reading my blog, you already know this about me.  I have green doo-dads all over my studio, and frankly, all over the house.  I collect green depression glass, have a lime green stand mixer, lime green dishes, lime green clothes, lime green front door, lime green patio furniture, plus a lot of other stuff.  I just bought a lime green rain coat from Pendleton!  I am just so happy and delighted when I surround myself with lime green.

Neiman Marcus put a green butterfly lady on the front cover of "The Book" in May 2003.  I saved it and have had it on my bulletin board ever since.  20 years later and I still love the picture!  This was the inspiration for my second green lady.  

I traced it and had it enlarged to be the same height as my other green lady.  When I traced it, I noticed that there was a cat sitting on the lady's shoulder.  I had never seen it before; or I hadn't remembered seeing it.  I'm going to imagine that it isn't there for my quilt and perhaps fill in the space with flowers.

I started by concentrating on the wings first.  Since I wanted them to be transparent, I pulled out all of the organza in my stash.  I had lots of colors that would work, but needed a large piece for the background of the wings.  So, I headed over to JoAnn Fabrics and found much more than I thought I needed in both organza and ribbons.  I found a luscious lime green organza, a sparkly white net, a sparkly pink organza and a peach floral sheer.  Then I picked up some ribbon in several shades of pink , a couple in bronze and finally some fake flowers.  

I backed some of the organza with Misty Fuse and then cut it into shapes for the eyes and embellishments on the wings.  This step was done first, using freezer paper templates.

I already had all kinds of stabilizers and decided on two for the wings.  For the bottom layer, I placed OESD Wash Away AquaMesh.  It has enough body to support the organza and stitching, but washes away to leave only the light transparent layers.  The top stabilizer was clear Solvy.  I could trace the design on this top layer, stitch the piece, and wash off the stabilizer and marker.

Here is the order of the layers:   AquaMesh; green organza, sparkly white net, eyes and embellishments backed with Misty fFse, and Solvy.  The sandwich was pinned together and stitched down with regular green thread on the outer edges and the lines between the wings.   I used one of the ribbons for the pieces between the ribs of the wings using a 4.5 W x 2.7 L stitch setting.  Zig Zag stitching was done as 2.0 W x 1.0 L for the veins in green sparkly thread, and 3.6 W x .65 L for the outer edges in bronze sparkly thread.  

When all the stitching was done, I trimmed the outer edges, leaving a little extra, then soaked and dried the pieces.  Here is one of the upper wings:

I hope you like it so far!