SPOILER ALERT! Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt top done

I've been slowly working away on the Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt I signed up for on Craftsy. The quilt came in different sizes and first I picked the 64" x 64", but then I changed my mind and made the 48" x 48" layout. I like the result a lot. I had a little booboo that I had to correct which resulted in multiple attempts to fix the problem. I think I had to take the top apart twice before I could put it back together the right way. Then I took pictures of it to post it on the blog, and after editing the first one I realized I still had a turn in it that I had to take it apart again. I think I'll name this one 3rd time is the charm :))

I think I will put borders on the top and bottom to make it a rectangle, I don't know why I like them better than being square. Maybe because our bed is a rectangle? Who knows!

Top #1:

Top#2:

Top#3, the final result:

Of course by the time I got to photograph it it became cloudy outside so the colors are truest on the second picture. I didn't want to edit the photos too much.

'Til we blog again! :)

Post card swap

I signed up to swap fabric holiday cards with some of my twitter friends. Sandi @quiltcabana arranged the swap and signed the partners. My partner was Kim, who I don't know I never talked to so it was a little hard to think of what should I make. I tried to research some ideas, but to be honest, not too many are out there that are using fabric. I was lucky Sandi linked a few websites to look up how to make them. I decided with a window look and pine trees background. I finished the edges with binding from pure lazyness. I didn't feel like taking my sewing machine out to do decorative stitching. I figured it's a lot faster and easier just make a binding and call it done. I did some free motion quilting on the fabrics to give it texture. I outlined the pine tree and did pebbles in the background. Also took the fabric as a guide to draw the pine branches that were printed on one of the fabrics.

I really enjoyed the process, got to practice my handwriting with free motion quilting. My practice piece looked really good, but when it came down quilting the real thing I guess I got sloppy. I had to pick out the first stitching line and start over. It doesn't look as good as the original one, but it'll do. That's the best I can do for now at least.

After quilting I ironed the white fabric on timtex and ironed heat'n'bond on the timtex to hold the front and back of the card together. I sewed the binding on the front and hand stitched down on the back. I used a fine line fabric marking pen to write the address and sender. The final size is 5"x7". I don't mind paying extra at the post office, but I didn't want to make such a small card. The writing would've been really difficult to do by machine.

It was a really fun project, I'll look up more designs now I know how to make it. Hope you'll try it, I enjoyed the process a lot!

Here's the card I made:

And here's the one I received from Kim just yesterday:

It's such a cute picture with Santa and the reindeer :))) I'm really glad I participated in the swap! Thank you so much Kim for taking the time and put this gorgeous postcard together!

'Til we blog again! :)