ATC off to US

After a busy week/weekend with Daughter No 1’s 18th birthday party(it was a joint party with her friend, also 18 and they invited 180!) I managed to finish the ATC for the Fyber Cyber swap this week. When I couldn’t find an appropriate bead I decided to stitch the butterfly. It is one of several rare butterflies from the Mt Piper region in Victoria, Australia. I am hoping to do a series on the butterflies from this area, which is now protected habitat. The Moonlight Jewel[Blue](Hypochrysops delicia delos) lays it’s eggs on lichen covered branches which is the background stitching on the ATC, quite appropriate that it includes cocoon strippings!
My representation of the butterfly is silk ribbon embroidery on felt with beading and the feelers are one of Sharon B’s woven stitches from the PLOS class at Joggles.

I also started on the background fabric for the postcard and had great fun mixing up a combination of paints. I layered a piece of Zap cloth(bulk nappy liner) from the Thread studio over some cotton material and painted both together, using lots of water.

Here are the pieces hung out to dry (saved the newspaper from underneath too).

With the leftover paint I also did litttle stamping on some white cotton.

I’m off to the Australasian Quilt Fair tomorrow in Melbourne, so probably won’t get to work on this again until next week. It will be chopped up and layered to get the effect I’m after. Off now to have tea out with the family visitors who arrived from London 4am this morning. They’ve been sleeping off their jetlag. Cheers.