Postcard Frenzy!

Okay - these postcards are taking over. It's pushed my doll making to the back burner right now but I'm sure it will have an impact there in the future. Yep, keep telling yourself that Jude! I bought ANOTHER book today ... actually I bought two, but I only tried sewing a project out of one of them. Tonight's experiment was with Threadplay by Libby Lehman. She does this cool free motion embroidery ribbon stuff - it's awesomely pretty. The technique is pretty simple but I can tell it's going to take practice. My free motion embroidery is getting better but I've got a long ways to go. I chose a black background so I could see what I was doing, the pictures in the book are on quilted pieces and it looks much nicer. So for this piece I sewed the outline in a purple metallic, which was pretty easy, and then filled it in with an variegated orange-yellow trilobal polyester thread. It was a 30 weight and it was a poor choice. Too thick. I used a size 16 needle and lowered my tension but it kept shredding and now I have nests on the back big enough for something to live in! Thank goodness the backing goes on last, no one but me will know it's there. Okay - so you know too, sshh, don't tell. Then for the highlighting I used one of my embroidery rayons, much lighter, and I didn't have any problems. Used the same weight for the blues and it worked fine. Stuck a couple of buttons on it to balance out the little blue ovals and called it a night. So here it is ... it's supposed to be a ribbon even though it looks kind of like an amoeba .

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