Spring fabric postcard swap

Several weeks ago Sandi (@quiltcabana) who can be found at  quiltcabanapatterns.com/blog announced on her podcast that She's organizing a fabric postcard swap again, this time to celebrate Spring. As we all know that most of the country got a lot more snow this winter than we are normally used to, and I have to say, where I live we're still dealing with below freezing high temperatures during the day. I happily signed up since I really enjoyed the swap we had for Christmas. 

My swap partner was Sandy (@sandyquiltz) who is blogging and podcasting at http://quiltingfortherestofus.com/ 

She sent me this fabulous card which I loved!

As some of you may know orange is my all time favorite color so I was so happy to see that She used so much of it in the card :) The texture is really cool, the center of the flower has some really sparkly stuff, which always make me smile :) She has a tutorial of how She made it on her blog. Check it out, it's a REALLY nice technique!

I know She's really artsy, and I wanted to make a card for Her from one of my photos which I took either last year, or the year before, of a daffodil that just opened it's petals. Needless to say, I didn't find the picture on my hard drive, and decided to go for a less original method of looking for drawings in EQ7. I printed the pattern and wanted to try out Beth Ferrier's machine applique method using freezer paper. I modified my technique a little bit, as I didn't have to take the freezer paper out at the end, so I appliqued the tulips on a background fused to timtex to give the postcard some stiffness. It was fairly easy to make after I decided which pattern I wanted to do. Next I just glued all the tulips and leaves on the background (which I picked out thinking about blue skies) and stitched it down with somewhat matching thread I could find in my thread "collection" :)  Last, I wanted to satin stitch around the edges with yellow thread to represent sunshine, which Sandy very rarely have where She lives.

Here is the card:

I wrote the message on the back, took some photos,  and sent it in an envelope through the post office. I didn't want to risk sending it "bare" because I was afraid it'll get wet and the writing will run on the back. She really liked it which makes me happy. The little joys of life, right?

I am looking forward to the Summer swap which is coming up next, are you signing up? You better! You can go to Sandi's website to email her, or She's @quiltcabana on Twitter. Hope you will join us!

'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! :)