Lord of the Flies......

I'd be very worried if this thing came and landed on my sandwich!  He's a knitted fly, about one and a half inches long.  I used the basic pattern in the Birds, Butterflies & Beautiful Beasties book but had to adapt it somewhat to meet my client's requirements.

The body was knitted in a mixture of shiny black crochet cotton and metallic green/purple thread - it does have the irridescence of a bluebottle which unfortunately doesn't show up in the picture.  The eyes are made up of AB black seed beads sewn into a circle.  His legs are pieces of wire hairpin bent into shape and threaded through the belly.

The wings caused me a bit of a hiccup.  I had originally planned on using organza ribbon but when it came to making them, the ribbon was not wide enough and also had a white stitched edge which would not have looked good.  Then I had a light-bulb moment and remembered a little set of organza jewellery bags someone had given me, and luckily there was a silvery-grey one (just the one!) which was perfect. First I sprayed the fabric with hairspray to prevent fraying. I looked up houseflies in my insect reference books and drew out a correct shape on the material then cut it double.  The knitting book has a peculiar shape for the wings, bit like a turnip, but you know me, a stickler for realism. The fabric was then embroidered by hand using some very fine silver silk thread.

But that's not all - this fly is for close-up shots.  I was also required to knit three life-size flies.....

Needless to say, there is not quite so much detail in these.  They are made from a small length of knitted Icord using the same threads, then the cast on section doubled over and stitched to make a head shape.  A single AB seed bead was used for each eye, and the legs are short lengths of the black thread.  The wings are plain organza - even I draw the line at embroidering this small!

This was incredibly fiddly but lots of fun.  I wouldn't want to do it every day though!