ATCs y otras cosas

Yesterday it dawned on me that I had promised Renska three Sunflower ATCs for her swap, so for inspiration I searched in Google images, and the first one that caught my eye was a photograph of three sunflower heads against a brilliant blue sky. I decided to go with fabric as a trial run for the PCs, and on my sewing table found the sleeves from Jude's shalwar camise, still not ironed and put away in the blue bit-box. I cut out rectangles and pressed them over a playing card to get an outline to work to, cut out the leaves from a bit of green cloth with Bond-a-web on the back, and ironed the leaves into place before doing a bit of free-hand machine stitching for the veins. The flowers came from a bag of loose flower heads I found a couple of years ago in Domti. I removed the plastic centres and did some circular free-hand stitching to hold them in place, finishing them off with a circle of machined daisy stitch. I was undecided about how to finish them off; should I stick them to card, or go the whole hog and make fabric backs and whip stitch around the edges? So far I have stretched them over playing cards, gluing the spare material only on the back. I left them overnight to dry, and this morning thought they needed some definition, so I have rubbed a bit of darker blue felt-tip around the edges. I think I've decided to glue another playing card on the back to cover the raw edges, and shall then add a label with the details. That all sounds quite easy and straight forward, doesn't it? But it didn't happen quite like that...after ironing on the leaves, I carried the stack over to the sewing machine and had to search through the clutter on the table to find the box with the feed dog cover and embroidery foot. Then I couldn't thread the needle and had to search again for the tiny box that holds needle threaders. I stitched the first and second set of leaves down without any problem, but then couldn't find the third set...because I had picked up two layers together and the third set was now stitched underneath the second set...so OK, I needed an excuse to put a new blade in my scalpel, and I only nicked the blue once, and it was on a bit I could hide under a leaf...