Fabric ATCs

During the past few years i have made and swapped several paper-based ATCs (or Artists' Trading Cards, 2.5" x 3.5"). These, made for members of Unlimited Textiles, are the first ones I've created from cloth. They are a fabrc sandwich with pelmet vilene in the middle, and it's surprising how much texture and pattern can be achieved with in the dimensions.

 

The basic fabric is one I made during my City and Guilds course in embroidery, consisting of strips of neutral-coloured material sewn together using automatic sewing machine stitches, then cut up and reassembled a few times using the same technique. This cloth is like pastry: each time I use some, I cut and repiece the remainder to made another usable piece. Now I am coming to the end of it, and I can see that I will have to repeat the exercise to provide for future creative play.

 

For the cards, I machine-couched some copper jap to form the horizontal lines, and used the same dark red thread to overcast the raw edges. then I hand-sewed a number of tiny bronze sequins ( from Dale at the
Thread Studio, densely in the middle, and then dotted around the edges. They took together about 3 hours, not counting the time taken to make the "crazy patchwork" type base fabric. Great fun.

I'm very tired today. I was so anxious about the return to new schools that I threw myself into displacement activities, including quite a lot of housework (seriously needed) and registering us all with a new NHS dentist. Luckily, Anna and Ben had a good day and Ben had enough energy left to go and have a kick-about in the park with big sister Sarah and her bofriend, Joe. Today I am fit for nothing - this is the third time I've written this blog entry, having succeeded in erasing it twice previously before I posted it! C'est la vie.