It’s six weeks since I posted about my progress with the Postcards from the Hedge, so I’ve managed a fair bit of stitching since then. It was early December and I had just finished the foxglove postcard…

I decided to do the thrush next. We quite often see them in our garden and frequently hear their beautiful song on the back lane. First task was to make the background. This is done by weaving strips of cotton and then doing some slow stitching on it. I did a mixture of stitches, feather, fly, herringbone, cross and running stitch. With hindsight it would have been better a little less busy but I was thinking of blossom trees! Doing all the stitching does make it feel like one piece of fabric rather than a weaving.

To give the speckled breast feathers, Rebecca (from Featherstone House) recommended wax crayons, in particular a box of skin tone ones from crayola. I managed to get a box, Basically, fine shavings off the crayons were sprinkled onto cotton, this was covered with brown paper and then ironed. The wax is absorbed by the brown paper, leaving the pigment. It’s one of those techniques where you don’t really know how it’s going to come out, some splodges seem bigger than anticipated! I used a patterned brown cotton for the rest with a few wisps of grey fely to help merge the colours a bit.

The thrush is cut out using bondaweb and then embroidered fairly simply with mainly straight stitches and a few fly stitches. I do like the finished result.

Next to be stitched was a blackbird. The pattern had the blackbird sitting on a branch, I often hear the blackbirds down the back lane as they’re rustling through the fallen leaves. I happened to have a fabric that looked like frosty leaves, so I did a little slow-stitching with a variegated DMC thread just based around a wavy line.

The blackbird is also attached using bondaweb. What isn’t clear from the photo is the lace overlay used for the wing and the tail, it does give a nice bit of texture. Again the stitching is kept fairly simple with mainly straight stitches using a mixture of very dark grey, black and a dark variegated thread which has greens and purples in. I love him!

Next I’m going to do some flowers. I think I’ll just do two or three more embroideries and then work out how to put them in a book. Here’s the other ones I’ve already done..

Please visit the other blogs that are also taking part in this SAL. There are so many different projects to enjoy. The participants live all over the world so you may need to allow for time differences. We’re posting today at local time. Click the links to their blogs below and see what they’re up to.

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

Linda, MaryMargaret, Cindy, Helen