After taking a look at my list I discovered that I had two fabric postcards due in early April!! They needed to be on their way very soon!!! So I dug out some fabric scraps and created three backgrounds. In my internet search I had found some birds made with a half of a circle so decided I would make several of them to add to my backgrounds. I stitched some coordinating yellow fabric to a substrate then cut out three half circles. I kept digging to find several scraps that I could cut into smaller half circles to create the wings on my birds. I used fusible webbing to adhere the wings to the bird's bodies and then the same to adhere the bodies to my backgrounds. I used a scrap of my binding material for this postcard to create tails for my birds. I tucked the tails just below the bodies and then hand stitched all the way around the wings and the bodies with a tight blanket stitch to have them properly stitching in place. I added a black sequin secured with a large french knot to create an eye for each of them. A bit of black fiber is what I used to hand stitch their legs and feet. At this point, I remembered that I should have sewn my backgrounds to the batting BEFORE stitching on my birds but knowing that it was important I made it work by machine stitching all the way around the bird in a variety of lines. I was careful to overlap the legs so they would not look like they had been harmed in the stitching process. I prepared several backers starting with white fabric and adding some pellon to stiffen them up. I did not have enough for my last one so I usedt a layer of heavy fabric which worked reasonably well. I stitched the backers with a waves or a grid design before I fused them to the back of my postcard fronts. I trimmed all the edges to neaten them up. On the top postcard I incorporated a green nubby fiber in my blanket stitch to finish off the edge. I like the look and it would be fun to incorporate some funky fibers such as eyelash, fuzzy and maybe several fine ones braided together to give them more body.
I did vary their positions on the background - this one is look right instead of left. You can better see the machine stitching I did on the background on this one. I added pink bias tape trim to finish off the edges of this postcard.
This one is looking right and closer to earth!! I added some blue fiber to the edge of this one using one of the stretch stitches on my sewing machine. It worked quite well though I may have needed a more substantial fiber to mask the white innards of the postcard. Lesson learned!!
So two of these will be off to the members of my Fabric Postcard list which are having birthdays in early April!! Lots of fun making these postcards but I will be back to paper cards this week in preparation for my next cardmaking class.
Happy Creating!!
Therese
