April's update

Progress has been made. It took a surprising amount of thought and wasted thread to figure out the order of threading those beads. In the end I loaded them from the left upper corner of the pattern to the right. I started with the single one on the core thread then the blue. Then the white group then blue group for each wing. I only used one shuttle and left about 2 inches before starting that self closing mock ring which lies in the center. This way I kept it continuous so no extra hiding and balancing the knots out.

I did have to go back and use the videos for reference a lot. After the second mistaken bead load, I grew frustrated and did the bead-less version just to make sure I made the wings correct. Even that gave me issues at first. The graph of the pattern was playing tricks with my mind. It was the video to the rescue again. I realized when I saw the bead-less version that after the smaller 10 Ds ring, the next two rings are tatted prior to the next six chaining section. After that the Ring is thrown, which is the fourth ring on the right side then the next two rings are made before doing the next chaining section on the mock ring. The left side is the same.

When I reached the last large ring with the 4 beads in it and after making it , I threaded the core thread through the loop at the beginning of the mock ring and closed it. Then I hid that thread in the final 10Ds ring. Now I ran that thread tail through the beginning 3 Ds at the beginning of the mock ring.

This is the butterfly almost finished. The sewing in beads are giving me quite a headache. It's probably because I didn't have the correct size of beads and I'm just working with what I had on hand. I really don't like beading. This is where I wished YouTube translator actually worked better. Watching the third and fourth part of the video tutorial, made it abundantly clear that the voice over instructions held crucial information on the proper attachment of these beads. It didn't help that the camera went out of focus a few times making just watching a contributing factor to my headache via eyestrain. I'm going to stop here for tonight and post another update with the finished piece later this week.