Cleopatra Butterfly on Ivy by Martina Frank

Hands down Mother Nature is a better designer than any of us.

The Cleopatra butterfly - Gonepteryx cleopatra to those who study such things - has been gifted a perfect disguise. Its wings are leaf-shaped by design, their sulphur-yellow surfaces softly veined and gently tapered, created to disappear entirely when the butterfly folds itself into the foliage it calls home.

It is simultaneously vivid and invisible. Conspicuous in flight, gone the moment it lands.

In her latest piece, Cleopatra Butterfly on Ivy, Swiss embroidery artist Martina Frank has taken a creature whose entire survival strategy is to disappear and made it impossible to ignore.

The Cleopatra's wings are worked in brilliant sulphur yellow over lemon cotton and silk organza with four wired and detached panels that lift slightly from the fabric surface and catch the eye immediately against the deep, cool greens of the ivy below.

Nature's camouflage artist, fully exposed. Yellow against green, conspicuous against hidden, a tension that makes the piece so arresting.

Six individual ivy leaves, each one wired and worked separately in Au Ver à Soie stranded silk, radiate from an overcast stem that shades from deep pine green at its base to pale pistachio at the tip.

Each leaf carries its own tonal range - from blue-green shadow to bright parrot green - with white silk veins picked out in split back stitch. They are so botanically convincing that the real ivy in the photograph blends in perfectly with its stitched counterpart.

Somewhere between natural history illustration and embroidered sculpture, Cleopatra Butterfly on Ivy is the kind of piece that makes you look twice and then lean in for a third time just to be sure.

Re-create your own Cleopatra Butterfly on Ivy with the Ready-to-Stitch kit now available. That said, stock is limited so check availability HERE.