When I saw the typo in the title, that’s exactly what I did! Double Tkae indeed – and I’m an English teacher – hah! I have no excuse for the frequent typos, I have no idea why I can’t touch type either. I can’t even use predictive text… you should see some of the things I used to send DD before I learned to turn it off!

Anyway, I digress… this week’s challenge at SPA was to use the same image twice in our postcard art. I started with the makeovers again yesterday – sewing machine, scissors, ironing board out upstairs and I cut 3 pairs of fingerless gloves from an old lambswool waistcoat (now awaiting embellishment before they go to the Etsy shop!); I converted a shiny black dress into a bag (awaiting handles) and even made the zipper go round the corner!!! I cut and tore strips of silk up for the prettifying and sewed up a sweet pair of variegated blue wristies (that have a matching hat) to photograph and Etsy later… I have also started the sleeves of the jacket I was knitting back before Christmas, so I was in full-on, artisan-mode.

I decided to take advantage of not yet having put away the sewing machine this morning and create a fabric postcard. I have some beautiful vintage playing cards with the same image on every one which were ideal for the theme. I get Linda Matthews  newsletter every week and she shares some beautiful tutorials, etc. I am often inspired by her (textile) projects and I wanted to try the simple scrap-strips method she showed one week… although I didn’t use the iron, I just stitched them together.

Seeing double...

It’s such a pity the metallic ribbon on the right and the shiny gold fabric on the left don’t scan well, but you can just see the red metallic thread I used to stitch the images down, can’t you? I know metallic thread can be tricky to stitch with – mine broke once when I was sewing through the brown suedette strip – but if you stand the spool on the table behind your machine, the thread seems to flow more freely and not get stretched to snapping point.

That’s a tip from a Cloth, Paper, Scissors newsletter last year!! See, I may be very eclectic and untrained, but I do pay attention sometimes! The reason for this foray back into stitch, knit, sew is really down to my bookbinding buddy ***Billie (Billie’s Craft Room), whom I first ‘met’ in JP’s Supernova Journalling Class. Billie has been picking my (in)expert brains about interfacing, threads, knitting, etc. We haven’t met in real life yet, but as we are moving later this year, it’s a pretty fair bet that we will sooner or later… 🙂

***See Billie’s blog for loads of tutorials about crafting items, reviews, featured artist of the month is a good read too! And, if you need help, Billie’s bound to respond quickly – she’s very kind (and a Twitter addict!).

So, this is a long post, innit? But, I might be too busy embellishing and stuff to write much this week – we’ll have to see how it goes. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!