The Night Watchman

When I saw THIS POSTCARD by robertovnaelena (Instagram), I was immediately in love!

I wish she’d send it to me...(sigh)

I know that won’t happen, so I had to try making one myself.  Nowhere near as impressive, but he’s my version.  Not completely unfortunate, right?  I’ve had to call him a blackbird as he’s just not raven enough looking.  I used a bird Sizzix die to trace.  (I wish I could draw!)

I also wished I could figure out a couple of her techniques, but I didn’t really want to copy right down to every detail.....YES I DID!

He’s made from discarded jeans.  A couple of different denim shades.  The moon in this 2nd photo is closer to the actual fabric color.  It’s more a grayish white with silver metallic specks. I first stitched a spiral using silver metallic thread in the bobbin.  I used the wonder under paper that I peeled off the fabric moon to trace a spiral then stitched it from the backside of the postcard.  It needed more thread painting so I stitched between the spiral stitches with regular thread in a cream and then some outside stitches in the gold.

I think if I had stitched the raw edge of the bird a little farther in, I might have been able to ravel the denim edges a little more so they’d look more feathery.

Are you curious about how my postcards look on the Peltex side?

I normally sew a binding around the edges of my postcards.  That’s because I have felt it looks better than zig-zagging. But this artist’s satin stitching on her postcards looks so great, I decided to try that myself too.  Hoping my satin stitch would fill in as nicely as hers did and only going around the outside edges once, I was not disappointed.  My corners need a little work.  I’m okay with that.

Secret ingredient:  At times, satin stitching doesn’t always cover completely or a stitch length will show.  I go looking for a permanent marker the same color as my thread and I camouflage those tiny areas.

Because I am not mailing this postcard to anyone, I used miracle fabric on the correspondence side.  Very adaptable to rubberstamping and writing (if I were to mail it).  I also did not want to test the satin stitched edge with paper after all my work on the design.  But I will be testing it with paper soon!

I have a lot of discarded jeans left, so I’ll be thinking up more denim postcards.

Happy Mail Day!