Postcard for the Embroiderers's Guild Stitching Together Exhibition

Holding the case that contains my postcard

Coming soon is the City of York Embroiderer's Guild Triennial Exhibition "Stitching Together" which will be held at the Tithe Barn, Church Lane, Nether Poppleton, York, YO26 6LF from Friday 22 June to Sunday 24 June 2018.  One of the exhibits is a series of postcards stitched by members which is also a competition.  Each postcard depicts a place and you have to guess where they all are.

 

Calico & pelmet vilene

My contribution is a postcard of a lighthouse that I chose to applique and stitch.  The lighthouse is one I have visited and that I have a photograph of.  (I haven't included the photo here in case it helps anyone guess where it is!)

 

Materials - dyed calico, cotton & yarn

The base of my postcard is calico bonded on to pelmet vilene which I then coloured with Inktense watercolour pencils and blended with a wet brush.  While this was drying I made a pattern for my lighthouse and cut out the various pieces from cotton and dyed calico that had bondaweb ironed onto it.  

Painted background and lighthouse pieces bonded on

Once the painted background had dried I peeled off the bondaweb backing paper and ironed the lighthouse pieces into position and machine stitched them in place.  Next, with a Frixion pen (which irons off) I drew on the extra details I wanted to stitch - the rail at the top of the lighthouse, the windows  and the pattern on the glass.

Lighthouse pieces machine stitched, frixion pen detail still visible

With this element of the machine stitching finished, I chose some yarn for the vegetation, laid it on the postcard and free machined it in position.  
 

Vegetation stitched in position

At this point I thought the background colours needed strengthening so I added some more Inktense colour.  When dry I hand stitched some extra vegetation.

Background recoloured and more vegetation handstitched

Then I machine stitched the front of the postcard to the back with a zigzag stitch.  The back of the postcard was piece of natural calico bonded to pelmet vilene.  Afterwards I printed off a copy of the postcard onto fabric and made a container to keep my postcard safe.  That's me at the top of this post holding the container that my postcard's in.

Finished postcard

Do you know where it is?  If you do, don't tell anyone - come along to our exhibition and enter the postcard competition and guess where they all are! 

The exhibition is open on Friday 22 June & Saturday 23 June from 10am to 5pm and on Sunday 24 June from 10am to 4pm. Entrance £3.  There will be tea & cakes!  Hope to see you there.