u/JoannaBe

Insects Part 3 of 6: Ladybug

I am now done with the first of two tapestries that have 3 insects each. The plan is to attach them around a foam craft cube, and the photos here show how that will look.

I am beginning to be a bit more aware of copyright, so instead of posting a copy of the photo I based the ladybug on, here is a link to it: Ladybug on Forgetmenots by photographer Marek Mierzejewski (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ladybug-ladybird-on-forget-me-not-94700503) Incidentally the photographer is Polish 🙂. I remember as a kid in Poland one of the first rhymes I made up was “I am sitting in an apple tree, one two three. Counting dots on a ladybug, one two three.” In Polish appletree and ladybug rhyme. I remember I had climbed the appletree in my grandma’s yard and was sitting on a sturdy branch, but I do not remember whether I really was counting dots on a ladybug at the time, however, ladybugs were common there.

I am quite fond of them. As some or all of you know there are different species and some are more invasive than others. This one is a “good” ladybug.

The tapestry is 5” wide and 15” tall in total, for a cube that is 5” cubed. I wove it on my Mirrix Chloe loom at sett 12, using Faro

wool yarn.

I am about to start my second tapestry for this cube, and the fourth insect will be a Picasso bug, which I had never heard off until I started looking for good insects for this project.

Morpho Butterfly (Insects Part 2 of 6)

The blue Morpho Butterfly is one of the largest butterflies in the world, spanning 5-8inches. The striking blue color is due to scales under its wings which reflect light. It is found in tropical forrests in Latin America.

This tapestry is 5” by 5” in size, and is part 2 of 6 insect tapestries that I plan to attach onto a craft foam cube when done. I plan to weave one more tapestry on top of this one, and then do the other three insects as a second tapestry.

I am attaching the photo of both the parts I have completed thus far, the photo of just the butterfly part of the tapestry, and the photo I based this on (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images) which I found here:

https://www.wired.com/2016/12/morpho-butterflys-blue-isnt-seems/

I wove this on my Mirrix Chloe loom at 12 ends per inch, using Faro wool yarn as weft.

I am very pleased by how this turned out. As is common for me, I used some embroidery to enhanced the woven tapestry - the curves lines on the butterfly were embroidered onto it and the lines in one section of the plant. I am quite pleased by how well the plant parts of these small tapestries turned out. In this project I am exploring the impact of lots of negative space and just a couple of chosen foreground objects.

The challenge of trying to keep the salvedges as straight as possible for me so that the edges continue to be the right width apart for the cube is another aspect of this work - no, my edges are not completely straight but they are only occasionally a bit wider than desired, which given the idea of attaching this to a cube is more ok than if the tapestry got less than 5 inches wide at any point.