Gothic Butterfly Heart Embroidery Design, Dark Valentine Machine Embroidery, Instant Download

A butterfly with wings fully spread, the way the wings angle and curve forms a heart outline when you look at the negative space between them. Its a clever piece of visual design, gothic in style with bold black outlines and a deep burgundy fill across the wing panels. Fine directional stitching runs diagonally across each wing section to build the veining detail, 397 stitches per inch so the detail holds cleanly without any crowding. Stitch count runs from 5,955 at 2.15 inches wide up to 13,696 at 4.6 inches, this is a narrower-width design, taller than it is wide, which makes it great for vertical placement like a sleeve or a leg panel.

Back your fabric with a firm cutaway stabiliser and hoop the whole thing tightly. The wing veining involves alot of short directional passes, so the stabiliser cant have any give or the small runs will start shifting slightly between colour changes. There are 2 colour stops, black outlines first then the burgundy fill goes in. Message me if youd prefer to run this with the colours inverted, it works just as well with a red outline on black fill for a more dramatic look.

A customer last autumn ordered this one for a Halloween-adjacent Valentines jumper swap, stitched it in black and silver on a dark grey sweatshirt and it looked incredible. Because the design is taller than wide, it fits neatly in a patch shape on a sleeve without the proportions going odd. Use it on dark navy, black, charcoal, or deep forest green fabric for full gothic effect. Pale cream or white backgrounds with black thread also read really well if you want a more vintage entomology print vibe rather than full gothic.

Pair this with a back panel skull or a front pocket monogram if you're building a custom alt-fashion piece. The 4.6 inch size on a sleeve at the bicep is the most popular placement based on what people order it for.