Building your fabric collage
TRACE THE PATTERN
Trace the major lines from the pattern onto your foundation (Pattern-Ease). You don’t have to trace every single line, because you have the pattern to use for marking shapes.
BUILD THE BUTTERFLY BODY
1. Take your body fabric (with Steam-a-seam applied to the back), peel back the fabric and lay on top of the pattern. Trace the body shape onto the backing paper (on the side facing the back of the fabric) as shown. Use a black sharpie pen for most fabrics, but you might need to use a white chalk pencil for very dark colors.
2. Lay the fabric back down on the paper backing, flip it over and cut out your shape that you drew.
3. Now peel paper backing all the way off of the body shape and put the fabric onto your tracing on the foundation (the back of the fabric should be sticky). It will stay until you are ready to make it permanent with your final ironing.
4. Add any details right on top of the body - shown here some grey shapes are fussy cut from another fabric, paper backing is removed and they are stuck down.
5. Eyes are traced from the pattern, just as the body was done. Paper backing removed and they are stuck right on top of the body.
BUILD WING EDGES AND FILL WINGS WITH COLLAGE
1. Fill in the edges of the wings. You can trace the pattern as you did for the body, or cut strips or shapes and build it up to fill it in.
2. Now have fun filling in the areas between the body and wing edges with shapes or fussy cut pieces of fabric to make a collage on the wings. Continue adding more to the collage areas. Use small shapes or strips of different fabrics, or cut petals from flowers in the fabrics.
3. Add additional detail by layering right on top of other fabrics. The Steam-a-seam allows for moving pieces around to try different combinations. You can see where the dark lines and spots were added at the final stages.
4. Once you have the butterfly finished and are satisfied with your design, iron it (high heat, steam, 30 seconds in each area) to adhere all the pieces to the foundation. Let it cool and cut it out.