Gumblossom Postcard

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I had a play-day in the afternoon after Mary had returned to her sister and niece for the rest of her holiday. I got out all the interesting materials which I had bought from The Thread Studio plus lots of other bits and pieces and started to make a postcard – the hardest part was getting my brain back into thinking creatively.

I started with some fabric paper which I had made earlier using some brightly coloured yarn from which I had unravelled black and gold yarns from the ball. I had ironed the “paper” which melted some of the fibres – oops!! however Mary had suggested that I use the mistake in the postcard. Well it looked a bit like a twig so that set the theme. I glued three skeleton leaves in place which I had already sprayed with copper paint then covered the whole lot in black net. After I had machine stitched around the leaves and twigs in a copper coloured machine thread and also sewn the main vein of each leaf, I cut away the net from the leaves only, exposing the fine veins. For the gumnuts, I glued on some metal foil scraps which were also gold/copper tones and I used a variegated blue/pink/silver machine thread to sew horizontal lines over the black net background. This livened up the postcard but it was still too “in my face bright” so after I had satin-stitched around the edge of the postcard with copper metallic machine thread, I sprayed the whole lot very lightly with the copper paint. That was much better. Before the gumblossoms were hand-sewn with roughly satin stitched edges then a fringe of copper crinkled Angelina fibres was sewn around each flower and bud, I coloured the area around each bud with a copper Shiva paint stick. I trimmed the Angelina fibres down to size then ironed only the middle of each flower to melt and secure the fringes but I left the edges un-ironed so they are still separate and fluffy. It still needed something so I sewed that multi-coloured dragon-fly in place as he had all the colours of the original background wool in his wings. Well, it was a learning experience, if nothing else!!

These are the materials which I used to make the post-card. Timtex, Spray paint, Shiva paint stick, Angelina fibres, wool, PVA glue, metal scraps, metallic thread and sprayed leaf skeletons.

This is a photo of the finished post-card. Maybe I sprayed too much copper paint over the bright colours of the background material – but it was an experiment in “what would happen if……” so in that respect it was successful.

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