I recently got involved involved in the artist trading card swap organised by the fabulous Ali @ very berry handmade. After seeing her beautiful examples of stitching I thought hey - I can do that.. and quickly signed up.
To be honest I have never being much of a beautiful stitcher or embroider .. I went to a catholic school run by nuns and hours were spent stitching and unstitching stitches .. that were too big .. too small ... too unstitch like and to be honest I was completely put off the decorative stitching .. but I wanted to get involved
The rules were simple
Your ATC must be 6.4cm by 8.9cm (2.5″ by 3.5″), but you can use the card in either portrait or landscape orientation. Don’t make the card too thick though – no more than 3-4mm (1/8″) please.
The ATC must be predominantly textile, but you can use any techniques that you want to try, e.g. embroidery, patchwork, beading, cross-stitch, fusing fabrics, colouring fabrics, using fabric paints or ink stamps. There’s masses to choose from – I’m going to do some blog posts about different ideas in the next couple of weeks, but in the mean time, here’s an intro to fabric ATCS and here’s some Flickr inspiration.
The back of the ATC needs to include, at the very least, your name and the date. It is also preferable to include your email address, and, if you have given the ATC a title, you can include this too.
The front of my card... I screen printed the spill of thread onto the linen.. then stitching along the edge and sitting it on a little pile of fabric .
It all went feel for me ... except I totally I forgot my email address and the date ... but hey ho.
I was dying to pop in some token fabric from my swapper person ... but we were to keep it plain and simple .
I have to say I totally enjoyed it and having a deadline in which to send it was good for me .. as things tend to drag on and on ... and you never seem to finish anything
The back of my Card ..
The beautiful Card that I received ... thank you Alix Mc Loughlin