Manta Ray Marine Animal Embroidery Design, Instant Download

This manta ray isnt the cartoon kind. The body is a wide kite shape, wings swept back at an angle like its mid-glide, the two cephalic horns at the front curling slightly outward the way they do in real life when the ray is filter feeding. A long slim tail threads out behind the right wing tip. The whole dorsal surface is done in dense directional stitching in slate blue and steel grey, with white irregular patches scattered across the back that mimic the actual spot pattern manta rays carry.

4 colours: slate blue for the main body fill, steel grey for the shading zones along the wing edges and around the gills, white for the spot clusters and the belly area showing beneath the wings, black for the fine outline work and the gill detail lines running across the face. The crosshatch-style fill on the wings is what gives the ray that textured, almost leathery look. the digitising software handled the directional changes on the curved wing sections without any of the blowout you'd get from a simpler radial fill.

I get messages from ocean biology teachers and coastal gift shop owners on this one aswell. One customer wrote me earlier this year saying she ran a chest 4-in on grey linen tea towels for a coastal homeware range and they shifted about 30 units in a weekend market. Makes sense, its detailed enough to look like a print but its still on fabric.

Run cutaway behind the design on woven fabric, the underlay density is moderate so it wont fight the stabiliser. Avoid polyester fleece at the smaller sizes as the loops catch on the long jump stitches in the tail section. Best on charcoal, navy, sage, or natural linen where the white spot clusters read properly. Skip white fabric because the white spots disappear and the slate fill looks flat without contrast.