Stitched Postcards for York Embroiderers and Stitchers

Woven bee with knitted wire wings

I am a member of York Embroiderers and Stitchers who are a friendly group of stitch and textile enthusiasts of all levels of ability and experience. We meet monthly at Haxby Memorial Hall near York. Over recent months there has been a stitched postcard project that I chose to be part of. We have been split into groups of six and have made postcards for the other members of our group.  This means we have each made 5 postcards for group members. Now all of the postcards have been distributed I thought I would share with you the 5 postcards I made. The theme for the postcards was Wings which could be real, imagined or abstract.

My first postcard featured a handstitched bird inspired by Scandinavian folk art and uses backstitch, fly stitch, double cross stitch and chain stitch.  I'd designed this stitched postcard for a workshop several years ago. (You can read about it here.)  It was nice to stitch it again and choose different threads.

Handstitched Scandi Folk Art Bird Postcard

I tried to match my postcards stamps to the subject on the front where possible...

Bird stamp for a bird postcard

For my second postcard I chose an aeroplane for a different set of wings...

Plane Postcard

Here I handstitched onto a photocopy of a plane using fly stitch for the wings (very appropriate, I thought) and also included some machine stitching.  I managed to find a plane stamp too...

Plane stamp

My third postcard was for our December meeting and so it seemed appropriate to stitch an angel...

Angel postcard

This angel has an embellished body, sheer fabric sandwich wings, pewter charms, beaded hair on khadi paper painted with watercolours and torn envelope clouds plus a typewritten angel banner. I also managed to find an angel stamp...

Angel stamp

In January, we had to have something metal on our postcards so I decided to knit some wire wings for my bee...

Bee postcard

The bee has a woven body.  The background is watercolour on khadi paper with some handstitched flowers and a bit of swirly homemade felt and a bee stamp for the reverse...

Bee stamp

The final postcard for our February meet-up featured a felt butterfly, appliqued and embroidered on a watercolour painted khadi paper background, flying through some handstitched appliqued felt flowers...

Butterfly postcard

with a butterfly stamp on the reverse...

Butterfly stamp

And of course it wouldn't be the whole story if I didn't share with you the postcards I received....

Whitby Abbey at Halloween on hand-dyed fabric is the subject of Annie's postcard. Check out the bats...

Whitby Abbey - Annie Smith

A lovely combination of peach and grey stitching makes up Pauline's Nuthatch...

Nuthatch - Pauline Twyman

Nicky has produced a beautiful blackwork angel...

Angel - Nicky Brunger

Judith uses paint and stitch for this delicate butterfly and flowers postcard...

Butterfly & Flowers - Judith Johnson

Nadine made this super mixed media bee postcard with lots of info about the scissor bee which is the smallest bee species in Britain...

Mixed Media Bee - Nadine Paver

It was great fun to join in and it was all organised by the amazing Chris Beavers, one of our members.  You can see everyone's postcards here on instagram or facebook.  Why not get in touch and come and join YES?