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!
