Butterfly tutorial

Assemble your ingredients: Cheap acrylic felt, tyvek (mine is a hood from a painter's overall), metallic pipecleaners, paper, scissors and pencil. You will also need some pins and scraps of net, sequins and beads. Acrylic paints. Your heat tool. A piercing tool, bradawl or drill to make tiny holes in the wooden peg. Sewing machine and thread. All the usual tools. And a dolly peg!

Make your pattern. Draw around the peg, marking where the slit begins. Draw your wings, taking account of the fact that the slit starts quite low down the peg, so your wings should come up a bit to start with. Also, make allowance for the peg (draw lines straight across so you cut the centre part). Fold your butterfly in half, and you can trace the wings and redraw them so that the butterfly is (reasonably) symmetrical. Cut it out.
Lay the tyvek carefully onto the felt and pin in position (obviously, you can't iron it, so do your best!). Draw around your paper shape with a marker so you can see it. If you have some, lay the net scraps on top and pin them in place.
Using a darning foot and with the feed dogs down, stitch around the shape twice and the fill in the wings with some pattern, making each the same (I went over the pattern again, too, but sometimes it isn't practical. Depends on what pattern you do). Bear in mind that you will be heating your butterfly, so you need to keep it fairly rigid with your stitching. It's common sense really. Paint the butterfly with a little acrylic paint (don't use water, or too much paint - I think it affects the melting properties of the tyvek).Paint your dolly peg with acrylic paint.
Cut out your butterfly shape close to the stitching, and stitch round it with a zigzag stitch (you can change the foot and put those doggies up for this). Melt it with the heat tool to distress it a bit. Make the antennae by cutting 2 shortish lengths of pipe cleaner, and make twirls at the end using pliers or a hemostat or whatever you have. I made holes in the butterfly's head with a piercing tool and just stuck them in. You could use a little glue if you like. Then I carefully melted them with the heat tool and they frizzled a bit, and that was kind of good. You don't have to.I sewed on a few sequins and beads by hand, and then melted them with a hot iron (under some baking parchment, of course). I also used my Glossy Accents to add a little dimension to the body. You could put eyes, whatever you like. Stick the wings into the body with a suitable glue and touch up any painting that needs doing (the inside of the peg?)And then I set my butterfly free to fly in the garden along with Penny's.
I hope you'll make a butterfly. It doesn't take long. I think they'd make nice magnets, or maybe a mobile. Probably a bit big for a brooch, but you could put one on your hat (but only for a really important wedding!) If you make one, I'd love to see.
P.S I tried very hard to see if anyone else has been making these, and couldn't find any. So I am hoping it is my very own idea. Please don't sell the butterflies you make, or the instructions.