the Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap

It is good fun to participate in a swap, there is the anticipation that comes from waiting to get something in the mail, the surprise of the swap and then the appreciation of someone's work. Swaps usually have a theme and are small, manageable projects. They can be great way to explore ideas and exercise your mind and creativity without having to commit to a big piece of work.

I found this swap through reading another blog - One Bunting Away. This blog is listed on my blog as blogs that I follow. It is called the the Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap. The theme was Create and required that the finished work be stitched and possibly include paper. The swap has now closed but you may be able to look at other work very soon on their facebook page.  https://www.facebook.com/DoWhatYouLoveXx

The first thing was to hunt through some fabrics and papers that I had created.  The base fabric is a superfine wool that was ecodyed with leaves gathered from a friend's eucalyptus trees, onion skins and rusted metal objects using the bundling technique. Then I chose a leaf print that I obtained by putting the leaf in between two pieces of watercolour paper, clamping and then steaming.

top   Eucalyptus macrocarpa
bottom   eucalyptus preissiana 

I cut the fabric to postcard size and also some heavy iron on interfacing/vilene to make the fabric stiffer and easier to stitch on.

Then I fused the vilene to the fabric

The next step was to iron some vliesofix to the back of the leaf papers

Then I removed the backing paper from the vliesofix and carefully tore around the leaf shapes

The leaves were then ironed onto the base fabric

Some free machine embroidery added to make sure the paper stayed attached and the card had some stitch.

The leaves were outlined and some detail in the veining and holes

The backing (watercolour paper, dip dyed in the eucalyptus dye) was cut to fit and attached to the wrong side of the postcard with machine stitch

And after some information about the swap was added,  it was addressed and ready to post.

ready to post
address of my swap partner covered to respect their privacy