• Place a piece of grey cotton fabric onto the sticky grid of your Sizzix Stencil and Stamp Tool/Sizzix Studio Registration Press Tool. You want this piece of fabric big enough to fit into a 5" embroidery hoop with excess so you can pull your fabric taut as you work on the embroidery. 
• Using the star stencil from The R's Have It set and the blending foam on the Sizzix Multi-Tool, apply matte white acrylic paint onto the fabric by pouncing the foam. 

• Remove your stencil and wipe it clean. Then turn it 90 degrees and place it on your project again. This time, apply a metallic silver paint through the stencil.
• Remove the stencil and place it in a stencil bath or clean it off. Let the paint dry before moving on to the next step.
• Place the butterfly stamp from The R's Have It set in the center of the stenciled stars. Bring down the clear hinge lid of your tool to mount the stamp on the lid. Apply Distress Archival Ink in Black Soot to the stamp and press it onto the fabric. Repeat if needed to get a good impression. Your project should look like the image below.

• Remove the fabric from your tool and load it into your embroidery hoop, pulling the fabric nice and taut. 
• Using DMC Diamant D130 Black Metallic thread, outline the butterfly with a back stitch or split back stitch. For the wing segments, you don't need to be quite as detailed as the stamped image--some of those segments are pretty skinny, so just make them as wide as you think you need for them to look good. (Your project should begin to look like the image below--here I'm still in the process of finishing the outlining with backstitches.)
• Once you've outlined it, go back under each stitch to make the line bolder using the same thread (see this video for a demonstration of this technique).

• The body uses a padded satin stitch. This means you do multiple layers of satin stitching to create a raised look. Start with DMC Standard Floss #310 (black), creating the pad layer by satin stitching each segment of the body. You want to do these stitches perpendicular to the final stitching layer. So if you want the final metallic layer to be vertical, stitch with the cotton floss horizontally. See the photo below for what your project should look like at this point. 

• Then take your black metallic thread and satin stitch perpendicular to the cotton pad layer, filling it in edge-to-edge using the outline stitching as your start and end point. 
• Using the metallic black thread, satin stitch in the areas of the wings that need to be filled in with black, on the edges and separating sections of segments.

• Then using DMC Diamant D168 Light Silver thread, stitch a starburst on each stenciled silver star. To do this, use a black pen to mark a small dot in the center of each silver star. 
• Then I take the silver thread, coming up through the fabric at the outer point of a star, then bring the thread back down through the center of the star. Do this for each of the 5 points. 
• Then do the same for the inner corners, bringing the thread up at the inner corner of the star and again down through the center. This will create 5 longer spokes and 5 shorter spokes, making a starburst pattern.

•  To fill in the butterfly wings with color, use DMC Mouliné Light Effects E155 (purple) and E747 (blue). I used what could be considered a hybrid between satin stitching and long-short stitching. I wasn't concerned with straightness or neatness, but more about achieving the texture that I think you would see in a butterfly wing. 
• Fill in the top wings with blue and the the bottom wings with purple. 

• This fun embellishment is totally optional, but really adds some impact to your butterfly! Using the purple floss, take your needle up through your fabric near the edge of the wing, string a tiny 4mm cup sequin in purple onto the needle and thread, then take your needle back down through the fabric as close to the sequin as possible. 
• Using the same purple floss, come up through the fabric with your needle where you want a bead for an eye. String a dark silver bead on and then come back down through the fabric with your needle as close to the bead as possible. I went through each bead a second time to help get the bead to lay in the direction I wanted better. 
• Use a tiny dot of Sizzix Express to affix an iridescent black gem to the body of the butterfly, and clear iridescent drops to the center of each silver star. 
• Tighten the fabric in your hoop and cut off the excess fabric. Cut slits in the fabric and hot glue the fabric to the inside edge of the embroidery hoop. Finish off the back with a circle of felt.

Shop the Supplies:

Scrapbook.com, A Cherry On Top, Spellbinders, Sizzix & Amazon

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Below are products that I used for this project.