Butterflies - free cross stitch pattern

I went for a long walk yesterday. I have to keep moving because I really need to lose weight, and I am having problems with eating. I was also collecting plants and flowers to try in my eco-dyeing experiments. Unfortunately, in Sweden, summer is coming to a close. It is so sad in August. There are hardly any flowers left, and those are almost all white or yellow, except the thistles that are bright pink and purple. So not much colour is left in nature. It is still mostly green but some of the plants started to turn brown. It's the ferns that are the first and as there is a lot of them around here, there will be this ugly not so nice brown colour dominating the sight for a long time from now. A few trees started also turning their leaves, now, that will be pretty when all of them are golden or reddish brown.
And on top of it all, work starts on Monday. School opens on the 15th but we start a week earlier. I have to admit, I am not looking forward to it. I have rested a lot during this summer but my back was hurting almost all the time, and this week it has become even worse.

Anyway, as I was walking yesterday, I was thinking how good that the butterflies are still around, they provided such a lovely colour variation. So this was the inspiration for today's cross stitch pattern. I hope you will like them. I made them in shades of purple, but of course, as usual, I encourage you to try other colours too.

The eco-dyeing process is going on, I need to take some photos and organize my notes, then I will be back with another report.


I have also worked some on my next "spirit cloth" piece. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at taking pictures as I was working on it. Here is a detail-photo, but I don't have a bigger one. Not sure where I am going with it next. Watch this place for more on it.

And the cross stitch pattern. Click on the picture and it will take you to the pdf file.

Happy stitching.