Wednesday, November 09, 2016

A birdie fabric postcard for a birthday exchange

I created this fabric postcard for a birthday swap on one of my groups!!  I started by sewing two blue scraps to each other and then I stitched two green ones together.  I applied fusible web to the dark green fabric and trimmed it roughly to look like a treed horizon line.  Once I had ironed it to the bottom of the blue piece I trimmed the whole piece to 4" x 6".  I then added a piece of batting to the back and stitched wavy lines across the whole thing using blue thread for the top portion and green thread on the bottom section. I fused a piece of white cotton to the back to give the whole thing a bit more body.
To create my little birdie I created a collage button using a scrap of yellow and red fabric paper.  Once it was dry, I created a little beak out of dark brown fabric to which I had fused some webbing so I could just iron it in place once I was happy with how it looked.  I positioned my button, then placed my beak and ironed it into place and stitched the long legs with dark brown embroidery thread.  I added a black brad to create the eye of my bird.  I worked on making a tail and a wing using tulle and bits of fabric scraps which were cut off when I was creating this postcard.  I tied the tulle into the holes of the button to create the wing and added a few of the yellow scraps to add a bit of colour and bulk.  I used yellow embroidery thread to sew the button to the postcard and left the ends long once they were tied off to add yet another bit of texture to the wing.  I tied off another section of tulle with yellow bit included to create the tail which I glued to the back of the body of the bird once it was stitched in place.  I did find that the wing was a bit too undefined so I hand stitched the fibers together with brown floss and tied them off loosely.  That was better and I added a glue dot just beneath the wing so it would stay in the right position.  I bound my postcard using a dark brown polyester trim which I sewed to the front, folded over the edge to the back and restitched so it would stay in place.  Very happy with my little birdie postcard which will be winging it way to my partner in the next couple of day.    Therese