Leaves - A Fibre Postcard & Art Now For Autism

I had a lovely surprise this week when Leah in Texas commented on one of my posts and said she'd love to trade. Now I am nearly always up for a one-on-one trade so I quickly said yes. We agreed on a postcard with a leaves theme. It is not due to be posted until the end of the month but yesterday I got the urge to start and before I knew it, the postcard was finished.

I have used a text printed fabric background (you can see it in the background of my picture) but the muslin that I layered and stitched on top has virtually obscured it. I'm telling myself that it is "providing depth" as I hate to waste expensive fabric, especially text fabric for which I am forever searching. I coloured the muslin by bunching it up and spraying it with various Adirondack Color Washes - I love those sprays! Because I have been reading Lesley Riley's book "Fabulous Fabric Art With Lutradur" I wanted to make my leaves from lutradur, so I dug out a piece from a whole pile I had painted a couple of years ago and used my woodburning tool to cut out some free form leaf shapes. I used the tool to score the leaves a bit to imitate veins and then stitched them onto the background using a green metallic thread. I added a bit of organza under the middle leaf, sewed on some miniature sequins and a backing and then decided to add some glitz by spraying some Glitz Spritz in green and gold. They give it a lovely radiance in real life!

Now as a result of "meeting" Leah I had a good look around her blog and found out that she is supporting "Art Now for Autism" through a fantastic and very generous give-away on her blog (appropriately called ART GIRL!) So pop over and have a look and decide if you too would like to link to the Art Now for Autism site and enter Leah's giveaway. Unfortunately the deadline for art donations for the on-line fund raiser is 1 September so I won't be able to make anything for it this year but I will be checking out the art available at the auction, that's for sure.