My “Butterfly” Wallhanging Sold

I wasn’t thinking of Butterflies when I began sewing the scraps together.  It was Halloween also known as  Samhain.  The ancient Celtic festival which marks the end of the harvest and beginning of winter.

I made a few pieces that day thinking they would all fit together in a quilt.  But   “Butterfly” stood out on its own.

The brown velvety fabric with the pink and white butterflies stitched on it came with me to my studio from Old Bedlam Farm. I’ve worked with that fabric in a few different ways over the years and this was the last of it.

After surrounding the piece with a maroon border, it needed something else.  That’s when I picked up my Language of the Goddess Book and turned to the section on butterflies.

“The butterfly was one of the many insectomorphic manifestations of the Goddess in whose hands was the magic transformation from death to life.” Writes archaeologist  Marija Gimbutas. As the culture of the Goddess declined and she was demonized some cultures saw butterflies as symbols of witches.

I’ve known more that a few people who have looked to the butterfly when someone they love dies and sees it as a communication from that person who has moved on.

In so many cultures the butterfly is a symbol of transformation.

In Jamie Sams and David Carson  Medicine Cards Book, they list the symbolism of the different stages of the butterflies transformation from caterpillar to butterfly.  It’s far from magic, for them the transition takes time.  It requires us  to develop ideas, make good and timely decisions and finally acting on those ideas.

And in her Healing Oracle book, Barbara Techel writes “Butterfly wings, so delicate and strong, carry them near and far. See them as a reflection that you too have what it takes to continue to strengthen and grow into the best version of yourself.”

I used one of the butterfly images from the Language of The Goddess book and stitched it in the green strip of fabric. Above it on the maroon rectangle is and symbol for eggs and the zig-zags and wavy lines represent water the birthplace of life.  The leaves and flowers came from me.

It’s only now  reading about the transformation stages in Sams and Carson’s book that I see them represented in my stitching.  The eggs as ideas, the water where those ideas germinate and the plants are the ideas realized.

My Butterfly Wallhanging is $100 + $10 shipping It is sold. You can buy it in my Etsy Shop  just click here. Or you can email me at [email protected].