I made a moth!

This craft project was born out of a weird midnight in-joke that went too far - Something about an enormous, clumsy moth called Caleb that met an untimely demise after an encounter with a bleach-filled toilet... I've been friends with Eleanor for 16 years now, and this is by no means the first of these bizarre characters we've concocted. It was her birthday last week, and I thought that it was the perfect excuse to crack out my embroidery threads and make a moth! I'm a needlework novice, but I'm pretty darn (haha, get it?) proud of this attempt at an embroidered brooch!





I didn't use a pattern for this, I just used a picture of a moth for reference and then stitched it freehand onto some old felt that I had lying around. I used a safety pin as the brooch closure, although you can buy little brooch pins very cheaply. I am surprised by how intuitive it was, once I started. I mean, the back of the moth looks pretty gnarly but the front looks great, and that's what matters, right? I think that half the battle with these things is threading the needle, and once that's done, you're off and away and you can start to be creative! The hardest bit to do was Caleb's little antennae. I wanted to make sure they were firmly anchored, which meant I had to tie lots and lots of tiny little knots. So fiddly! All in all, he took me a couple of evenings of gentle sewing in front of Australian Masterchef reruns. Best use of my time.



Here's Eleanor, being a stylish so-and-so, outfit completed with the addition of Caleb, chillaxing on her boob there. You probably won't be surprised to find out that Eleanor is a costume and performance designer, and she is really bloody good at it. If you're ever in need of a designer for your... performance, hit. her. up. Here's her website! Anyway, she says she loves Caleb very much, and that's encouraged me to do more freestyle embroidery, so watch this space! What should I make next?

It looks a bit like Caleb is in love with Eleanor's dragonfly necklace!

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