I’m making slow progress with my postcards, I haven’t got into a ‘routine’ with my retirement yet and I feel I’m faffing a lot at the moment, not using my time as productively as I could. We go on a big holiday shortly which is probably not helping, I keep thinking ‘after the holiday…’ Having said that I have made two dresses, a skirt and a baby quilt since mid August!

Three weeks ago I had almost finished my moon-gazing hare…

All I had to do was a bit of vegetation in the foreground. I used a mixture of pistil stitch, French knots, chain stitch and fly stitch with some variegated DMC threads.

I do like this one, I’m pleased with how it’s turned out.

Next I chose to stitch a dragonfly. These are all designs from the Postcard from the Hedge SAL on Featherstitch House, it’s paused at the moment for personal reasons, which is giving me time to catch up a little (in theory!)

I started by making the background. I chose four different green batiks, mainly from my scrap box as I only needed small pieces of each one. Some of the scraps were shorter than I would like so it is a little tight to turn everything under round the edges but there should be enough to manage. I overlapped them slightly and ironed them onto thin fusible fleece which held them all together but also gave a nice texture to the embroideries. I embroidered a few wavy lines to give the impression of grasses and reeds.

The dragonfly’s body is stitched over felt. It was meant to be over cottonwool, but I forgot to buy some on my way to my stitch group and a friend there gave me some turquoise felted wool which was pliable and a bit malleable. It was also a huge advantage when trying to cover it with satin stitch. I stitched a fine metallic thread with some DMC, it just gives a little twinkle. It’s not my neatest bit of work but it will suffice.

I’m currently on with stitching the wings. This is a little stumpwork which I have done occasionally. I’m using a piece of ivory organza overlaid with strips of blue and gold organza. The blue and gold is what I really wanted but the strips were too small to do stumpwork on, so I laid them over the ivory ti give a big enough piece to put in a 3″ hoop.

Stumpwork is where you embroider the pieces separately and then attach then to the final piece to give a 3D effect. I started by laying some florists wire over the wing shape, bending it carefully and twisting it at the point it would enter the body. I’ve over- stitched round initially just to hold it in place then I’m going back to cover the wire just with a simple over-stitch. I’m using a teal metallic thread which I hate stitching with but it does give a nice effect!

Once I’ve stitched all four wings I need to carefully cut them out and then position them by poking the wires through to the back next to the body…and breathe!

I’ll try and finish it before we go away and write the post so you can have an update in three weeks time, otherwise it’ll be November when I next post my progress.

Linking with other members of the group.

Avis, Claire, Kathy, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, Cathie, 

Linda, MaryMargaret, Cindy, Helen