5th Motif - Green Butterfly

This butterfly will be taking flight soon to the Palmetto Tatting Guild - it is my membership butterfly for 2010.

I made this butterfly once before when I first began tatting and it was quite a challenge then. This time I used a finer thread and took my time. The butterfly is actually five sections all joined together.

 
I used both shuttle and needle tatting techniques to make this butterfly. I could have done the entire butterfly using either technique, but I had already wound shuttles for both colors using the continuous thread method and I did not want to make the two- and three-ring centers using the thread on the shuttles. They are such small sections that I decided to needle tat them and leave the thread CTM on the shuttles for the larger outside sections of the wings.

Now fly away, fly away little butterfly...