Book festival and butterflies

 Since I am now officially a published author, I attended the book festival!  What fun to hang out with other authors.  

My table was a bit different to the other authors, since I did not have a pile of books to purchase, but a QR code, and lots of examples of what you can make when you buy my book.  Amazons main e-book platform is kindle, and this will scare some people away.  The thing is that kindle eBooks can easily be read on a laptop or desktop with an app called kindle for web. In fact this is the preferred way that I like to read books like this.  You can easily link to each of the chapters, it is all in colour, and you can bookmark pages.  You may strike it lucky and get it on one of the days the book is free.

Here is the qr code to purchase the book from Amazon

I had a few items as giveaways for those purchasing a book, and by far the most popular was my little fabric origami butterflies.  I am going to look at a few more simple origami folds and see how feasible it is to create them in fabric.

Strictly speaking I think origami always starts with a square, so this is where the butterfly falls short.  Oh well ...... poetic license...

Cut two different pieces of colourful fabric into rectangles 5" by 3.5".   Now stitch around the edges, leaving a gap in one of the long edges.  Clip corners, and turn inside out, and I find a chopstick is magic for getting the corners right.  Now iron it flat.  I don't bother sewing the little gap closed, but you can stitch around the edges if you want. 

 I like to iron the folds and then use one of these awesome little sewing clips or a pin to hold it in place while you sew.  Fold in half, and then half again like a little book.

Now fold each of the halves down into a triangle.

Turn over so the triangle is facing down, and using your finger open up the wings as shown.  Keep the open edge on the bottom as this is where you will insert the stamen. Iron and then pin in place.

Now the fun part!, Take a stamen, fold it in half and insert into the open part of the fabric, then sew it down, catching both pieces of fabric to hold it together so it doesnt unfold.  Bring the needle up about one inch down and between the two wings, and thread about three beads onto the needle, then bring up so that the beads form the body of the butterfly.   Secure your thread, and your butterfly is done.   

  You can leave the butterfly as it is or attach to a ponytail holder or brooch.  Either way I am sure you will make more than one.  I find them quite addicting to make, and it is a great use of bits of fabric.