Altered by Design ATC Swap and Vintage Nudes Swap (don't look at these if you find the female nude offensive!)

I had an away day from my quilts today and concentrated on catching up with some of my outstanding swaps. I've been playing with my Embellisher (a Pfaff 350) a lot lately (although not as much as I would like) and made a background on purple felt, needling down loads and loads of knitting yarns. It turned out that this background was enough to make ATCs for 2 different swaps. The first one is organized by the wonderful and creative Lenna Andrews who runs her swaps from this site. The requirement for this particular swap named Angels, Fairies and Divas ATC Swap was to used images from collage sheets produced by Altered by Design. They can be obtained from Joggles.

I concentrated on the Divas bit of the swap and used images from the Altered by Design Gypsy sheet. The paper images were cut out with a very small margin around them, that I used for sewing them on the felted background. I then spend some time finding suitable quotations for them all (from Forest Lovers, one of my vintage books). On most of them I also added some pink German scrap. I ironed on a fabric backing to the felt using Bondaweb (Wonderunder in US) and finished the edges by buttonhole stitching by hand, using a beautiful variegated silk thread (an impulse Etsy buy which turned out to be fabulous). I also added pink beads to the scrap and purply ones around the other edges. The final touch was a self-adhesive purple heart for each card (from Paperchase). I'm seriously addicted to these hearts!

As has now become a tradition I made an extra one for my 100 ATC project. This one is no. 85 (nearing the end!) and called The Girl was a Beauty. Made just as described above but with black German Scrap at the top.

The other ATCs I made were for the Vintage Nudes Swap on the ATCsforAll site. As regular readers know I simply love vintage nude and embrace every opportunity that comes along to use my collection of images. Unfortunately it does not happen often but I enjoyed making these ATCs hugely.

All the images are from Alphastamps Nude # 2 fabric collage sheet. They were cut out, again with a narrow margin, and sewed on to the felted background. On most of the cards I added a large pink ricrac ribbon which I rubbed with purple and gold Rub-On metallics as it was just that bit too bright. On the remaining ATC I used a vintage lace at the top. I added French text (which seems to really suit the vintage nudes!) from a vintage book called Aphrodite, by Pierre Louys, a book which sparked one of the first court cases for indecency.

This is rather amazing in this day and age as the text and images are quite tame, although I have to say nude still seems to stir a lot of controversy. Just today I read on the QuiltArt mailing list a message where a High School student in the US had missed out on her art price, because her piece contained some nudity. Yahoo also take a dim view of vintage nudity on their groups.

The only thing I find annoying is that there are absolutely no male nudity images anywhere, not even vintage!! Apart from the Visa advert here in the U.K. which starts with a nude man running after a stag night stunt. He of course ends up fully clothed at his wedding thanks to his Visa card. What I can't quite figure out is where he kept that card??

The ATCs were again finished with buttonhole stitching and beading as described above. I did make an extra one for this swap too, to keep, but haven't made it part of my 100 ATC project as the background looks too much like No. 85 above. Instead it will go in my Alphastamps art folder. It's called Plus belle. The text as a whole translates as: I'm more beautiful than ever.