Sewn Postcard

I mentioned in my spring break plans that one of my assignments was to create a postcard and mail it to my instructor. We could anything we wanted (as long as the post office would take it, of course) so I immediately knew I would be sewing one.

You would think with all the waffling I did on what to do that this would have taken me a long time to create, but it didn't. Once I (finally) decided on a base image, I pulled out some scraps and went to cutting. This wavering that happened is pretty much happening with everything. I am wasting a lot of time doubting myself instead of doing anything. This needs to change and I started with that change today.

I knew I wanted to use one of the photographs I took when I was in Brail in 2005. Why? Because my heart is still there and given the opportunity, I would be on a plane headed there right now. It was hard to decide which image to sew. I may do more of these because it was that hard.

In the end, I went with this photograph of a church in Tiradentes. Tiradentes is located in the interior of Brazil, where there are mountains and they do a lot of gem mining. The scenery is to die for and while there, I had the chance to go horseback riding in the mountains. Thankfully this is was not going horseback riding in the US, where you are nose to tail in a line. We were told that if we were comfortable with it, we could just go off. So after learning the Porteguese commands that the horse knew, I was off in a flash. It was bliss and I still cannot wait to have a place to have horses of my own.

Ok, I could go on and on about my travels in this beautiful county, but will leave that for a future post. I have it in mind to do an inspiration post with my images from this trip. This photo, and all of them that I took while there, are taken with film on a Minolta SLR. I did not touch up anything after scanning this and only added the watermark. I shot 20 rolls of film while I was there.

So here's my process of sewing this together. I started with a base of duck cloth cut to 4"x6". I cut out rough shapes and fused them to the surface.

Then with the photograph by my side, I free motion stitched in the details, leaving out some because of spacing issues (my fault). This was a different experience from the free motion work I have done before. I don't know if it's a combination of the heavy weight canvas or a mix of that with the fusible layer there. It will just take practice.

Here's the back of the stitching.

Then I trimmed up the sides and fused another piece of duck cloth to the back. I zigzagged around the edges to seal it together.

And now I have a blank side for writing on.

Here's the front again, taken outside.

And the back, with my message to my instructor. I just used a Micron pen to write on it, which worked great.

Then it went into the mail. The woman at the post office was a little unsure of it, but she took it. It's only going a short distance, so I have faith it will arrive.

I had a lot of fun with it once I got going. I am definately going to make more just for fun, and maybe to send off. I wrote briefly at the end of last year about doing a swap, and this is the sort of thing I was thinking of swapping. Any interest? I could do a better tutorial on how to put these together too. I also thought that I could have sewn cardstock to the back instead of the canvas so that's another option.

I'm linking this up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

I have other thoughts that I wanted to cover here, but have to run off to work. I will either post about that later tonight or tomorrow. Hope your weekend is starting off great!