CONE FLOWERS ALL IN A ROW

I spent a good portion of my weekend making more postcards for the various groups to which I belong.  

January's theme is The Sea Shore.  I just received this one from Barbara in Ohio.

I made five of each of these using a fusible raw-edge applique method.  

Instead of procrastinating, I made next month's cards as well.  February's theme is Flowers and out of all the flowers in the world I chose to depict the corn flower.  I know this flower not because it grows in my garden (actually not much grows in my garden), but because it grows profusely in my sister's garden.  I belong to several groups and wanted to send the flower to each member.  That meant that I needed to make 18 post cards.  The background was made from small pieces of fabric stitched to a muslin backing.  

Next I made some stamps from old styrofoam meat containers.  I stamped the petals and centre using bronze and purple acrylic paint on a hand-dyed square of pale green.  I let the paint dry and mounted the squares on the pieced background, along with a dark green stem.

Each step was completed 18 times.

Next, I free-motion stitched around each petal.

Then using monofilament thread, the pale green square and stem were stitched in place, and the whole card was bound in a close zig-zag.

I'm happy with myself that these were completed and I even sent them to their recipients in the post today!