Week 3 of the yellow dress! 🦋

Week three of the yellow dress is now complete - with a lovely whitework inspired butterfly!

While cleaning out some old projects, I came across the samples I did for our whitework embroidery unit. Whitework embroidery is a traditional technique that creates delicate, lace-like designs—often seen on antique linens, christening gowns, and heirloom bridal wear. While traditionally white on white, it doesn’t have to be!

Since this dress is a lovely, butter yellow linen with a nice open weave, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to make a simpler version of my old sample!

Now - let’s get started!

Some of these stitches are considered a bit more advanced - however, once you get the hang of them, they are easier than they look!

If you are someone who enjoys learning new stitches and want to upskill in embroidery, I highly highly recommend the Royal School of Needlework Book of Embroidery*. While working on this butterfly I referenced it to refresh myself on the stitches!

A great free resource is the RSN stitch bank. It has a ton of stitches with pictures, written instructions, and video tutorials! I’m going to link them in the steps - I think they are more helpful than me writing out the instructions.

Supplies needed*:

1. Embroidery Hoop (I used a 6 inch one wrapped in bias tape for tension)

2. Embroidery stand - this will make life mucccchhh easier for these stitches. Optional though!

3. Fabric of choice - an open weave, like linen, is ideal. Avoid fabric with stretch.

4. Size 10 embroidery needle

5. Size 13 chenille needle

6. Small, curved embroidery scissors

7. Blue transfer pencil or erasable pens

8. Stranded cotton embroidery floss

Step 1: Transferring the design + prep

I simply traced my design onto the dress this time - however, you want to be careful, as these are not forgiving stitches. Trace lightly, or use a water/heat removable pen.

Tension is absolutely key here. Your fabric should be drum tight in the hoop - this is why wrapping your hoop is really important, as it protects your fabric, but also keeps it in place while you work. You can use bias tape, or simply a strip of scrap fabric.

Step 2: Stitching!

We want to do our stitches in a certain order for this design. The eyelets - the technique where the fabric has been cut away - can change the tension of your fabric and make the other stitches difficult to complete.

1. Start with the trailing stitch to outline the wings - video linked! I used 2 full strands (so two strands of 6) of stranded cotton embroidery thread as the base, and used 1 single strand to cover.

2. Use a basic back stitch to outline any other areas you’d like - I chose to do the legs, antennas, and some of the wing detailing. You can choose how many strands to use - I used 4 (meaning I removed 2 threads from the standard 6 strand)

3. For the body, we are going to do a padded satin stitch. I filled the body in with a split stitch, and went back over using only 1 single strand.

4. Time to do the small eyelets! This is where your large size 13 chenille needle will come in handy.

5. Now for the shaped eyelets - I chose to add some shape to mine by not cutting out the whole shape. If you’d like to do this, you’ll want to ensure you done a double running stitch along all edges of the shape. The video linked will help make sense of this. ADVICE: try this stitch out on a spare piece of fabric first. Once you’ve cut your fabric away there is no going back!

6. Clean up - if you have any left over tracing lines remove them with heat/water - and ta da - all done!

   

   Next up: 🐇

*I’ve created an amazon store front as a way to share my recommended supplies. I do get a small commission if you purchase from my links - however, if you’d rather shop elsewhere, it is a great guide for key words and what to look for!