Stitch Study: Rhodes Butterfly

Today's piece was inspired by a tutorial from @willstitchyoheart on Instagram. She's an embroidery artist from Australia and I love her account, particularly her pieces that feature birds. They're stunning. Anyway, she's been sharing tutorials recently, and I watched her Rhodes Butterfly tutorial this morning while eating breakfast. I decided to give it a try for myself. 

I think I've done a Rhodes stitch before, but didn't realize it was called a Rhodes stitch. I did a piece back in June that looks a lot like one of the patterns I found online for the Rhodes stitch. The Rhodes stitch is a relatively easy stitch to do, and it creates really interesting texture within geometric shapes. It was created by needleworker and author Mary Rhodes (I just bought a used copy of her book). It's considered part of the cross stitch family of stitches. 

I used the butterfly pattern from the Nordic Needle blog (I believe it's the same pattern from the IG post too). The pattern is larger than my 3x3 square, so I improvised the spacing a little. I only used three threads for the design. I tend to use less threads for most of my pieces. It's not a perfect Rhodes Butterfly, but it's a pretty good first attempt. I love the way the middle part twists and creates a design within the design. I definitely want to try this stitch in other formats again. 

The back is fun too!

Details:
Stitches: Rhodes stitch, back stitch
Thread palette: SS 030, 802 (3 strands)
Pattern: From the Nordic Needle blog
Inspiration: @willstitchyoheart on Instagram