Tribal Swirl Butterfly Embroidery Design, Instant Download

Front-facing butterfly. Mirror symmetric, the swirls on the left exactly mimic the right which is the whole point of tribal art. The upper layer is red scrollwork, curling in and out like tattoo flash, and the bottom layer is black tribal flames running underneath as a backdrop. Slim red body straight down the centre with two thin antennae. Reads like something out of a tattoo flash sheet from the early 2000s but cleaned up alot.

Two colour stops, scarlet red first then black. The colour change happens once because everything reds stitched as one pass and everything blacks the second pass. Stitches climb fast on this one because of the layered fills, 15,846 at the small 2.96-inch and shooting up to 38,545 at the big 6.64-inch. Density is heavy at 644 so this is not a design for delicate fabric. Hooped firmly, with a heavy cutaway under anything stretchy, is the only way the swirls keep their crisp edges.

Digitised in industry software. The red sits on top of the black so theres a stitch order youve gotta respect, do not re-order the colours in your software or the black will cover the red. The satin underlay runs directional on the long curl strokes which keeps them from looking knotty. Avoid waffle weave and looped terry, the swirls catch the loops and look messy.

Works best on cream, white, charcoal, denim, or natural canvas where both colours pop. Bigger sizes are jacket-back or large pillow territory. One customer used the 6-inch on the back of a denim cropped jacket for her sisters birthday last spring, hooped with a heavy fusible cutaway and a layer of water-soluble topping over the indigo twill, and she said the red practically glowed. Ping me if youd like the topping-and-stabiliser combo she used, ill drop the notes in your inbox.