Tree Silhouette Fabric Postcards

This is my version of "Tree Silhouette" for my Fabricards postcard swapping group.

I made four of these.  Three to swap and one to keep for myself.

I made these a week and a half ago, but didn't want to post the photo too early and spoil any surprises.


Then, just for fun, I made another card out of the reverse fabric left over from punching out the tree on the first cards.  I'm loving the candy corn border on this one.

She loves me... She loves me NOT!

I have been fiddling with this postcard for weeks now trying to turn it into  a masterpiece, well maybe not a masterpiece but I at least wanted to be able to say "Look What I made!"  Instead, I want to introduce it to the garbage can.  I just don't like this fabric postcard.  I think I screwed up first  by putting that yellow background behind the ghosts. Then I tried to add some stars to go with the yellow but something still didn't look right about it.  So I decided to add an orange fringed border to bring out the orange pumpkin.  But I think I ended up making the card worse.

I was about to chuck this in the trash, but then thought, maybe I am too harsh on myself.  Someone out there may actually like it.

So, If there is someone out there who loves this card, drop me a line.  I will put your name on the back and put it in the mail just for you.  :)

*Update*  

The card is on its way to Wendy.

Thanks Wendy,  I am glad it will be loved.  :)

Halloween Postcard Holder

I got tired of my postcards falling off the fireplace mantle from only a little breeze of someone walking by, so I came up with a festive postcard holder to hold them.  It is similar to the other one I made, but this time I used plastic for the corners instead of fabric.  I was going to try another method I have seen on other blogs and use a whole 4 x 6 piece of plastic instead of corners and slide the whole card in and out, but the glare on the plastic was too much, so I just used the corners.

When I was done making the wall hanging, I had some interesting scraps left over, particularly the orange I used to punch out the "Happy Halloween".  It had fast 2 fuse on it and I hate to throw that away when I can fuse it to something else, so I did just that.  I cut it up into very small pieces, mixed it with the striped binding fabric and the black background fabric of the wall hanging and fused it all on the base of a fabric postcard.   I also took the small triangles eyes, nose, and mouth that came out of the punched out pumpkins and ironed them on as well. Then  I covered it all in black tulle, added some meandering stitching to hold it all down, and for the final touch, I placed the white ghosties on the top. 

I love it when I can use my littlest scraps and turn them into something cool.
I even have enough fused orange fabric to make another one.  

:)

Frog Fabric Postcards

 Every now and then I like to pull one of the unfinished frog postcards off my pile and practice my simple hand embroidery stitches.  One day I may advance and try some of the fancy stitches showcased on Pin Tangle, but for now I  want to get better at the simple stitches since it seems that the more complicated stitches are all based on these basic embroidery stitches.

18  more postcards awaiting hand stitching.

They are all similar to each other because all the images came from the same novelty fabric.

I spent one afternoon cutting all the salvageable images from the scraps of that frog fabric and attached them to the green base.
Now when the mood strikes, I just pick one up and grab my thread and start stitching.

  

I also put together this postcard the other day.

My daughter had this brown and blue flower appliqué iron on, but she didn't want it,

So I took it and turned it into this postcard.

Postcard Booth

About three weeks ago, I was asked to participate in the Tobacco Festival.  The person in charge of the Artists's section of the festival wanted me to display and sell my postcards.  So I spent the past couple weeks getting ready for the event.  And this is the fruit of my labors, my own booth at the event.  My daughter is in the photo posing at my booth and she was going to sit with me all day, but she found some friends and they went to enjoy the festival.  I didn't mind.  I would rather her have a good time with her friends.  They did stop by every now and then to check in and say hi, which was nice. When I first got the call to participate, I had plenty of postcards and ATCs to show from my collection, but I didn't have any to sell.  So I had to make a few so my booth wouldn't be so bare.

  I wanted to have a whole table full, but time didn't permit me to make that many.  What I did have time to make turned out to be enough.  I ended up selling four postcards and probably would have done better if there would have been more people walking by.  The "Artists on the Green", as we were called, got a raw deal that day.  If  the city would have decided to keep the main vendors across the street from us, instead of move them a couple blocks down then we would have had as much traffic as the rest of the festival.  The people would have naturally flowed over to our event, but since the main vendors were were moved a couple blocks down most people didn't even know where we were.  My husband had to tell a couple of his friends and our neighbor where to find me.  A few  of them made their way over, but others never did.
  Towards the end of the day I became miserable and bored.  It was super hot, temps in the 90's.  The heat is mainly to blame for my misery at the end.  But, if there would have been people walking by to chat and discuss postcards with, then the heat would have been a bit more bearable.  But sitting there doing handwork in the heat, not talking to anyone was just not fun. I actually became bored which it is rare for me to be bored. I was ready to be home and work in the comfort of my AC.
    The coordinator of the event felt so bad that she told us all that even if we did have sales that we could to keep the 15%  booth fee we owed her.   She did tell me she has other fiber art events coming up soon, though and they have been successful in the past and she would be in touch with me again.
   Over all though, minus those last two hours,  I must say I did enjoy the event and getting ready for it.    I even enjoyed the first couple hours sitting in my booth.  It was my first experience ever trying to sell my own items at an event, so I was excited and the very few who did come by were quite interested and were a joy to talk to.

  These next photos are the postcards I made for the event. These first ones are brand new ideas and there is only one of each of them.

These next ones are similar to ones I have made in the past and I made multiples of them.  

• 1 Log Cabin Quilt Block Postcard
• 3 Candy Canes postcards
• 7 beach postcards - I sold two of those.
• 2 Halloween Ghost postcards - I sold one of those.
• 4 Pumpkin Halloween postcards 

The other one I sold was a red and black spider web postcards with iron on gems.  I had made it about a year ago, but since I had a duplicate at home, I went ahead and sold it.  That is why there is a missing slot on the postcard display on the right in the booth photo above.  I sold that card while I was setting up the booth.  

Iris Folded Fabric Postcard

Last month my friend sent me this special card card for my Birthday.  She made it herself using a technique called Iris Folding.   Since I had never heard of that particular technique before, I decided to Google it and find out all I could.  It is done using small folded strips of paper and placing them around a specific pattern shape.

Since all the designs I found were small enough to fit on my 4 x 6 fabric postcards, I kept wondering if I could make one out of fabric instead of paper.  So I pulled out my left over fabric scraps and gave it a try.  This whale is my first attempt.  It really was quite fun to make it, and I printed out some other free patterns from the Circle of Crafters website to try later on.

Crazy Flowers

This is my newest fabric postcard. The theme was crazy flowers, so I used the crazy quilt technique for my background then added the yo yo flowers. I made a total of five, three for a swap, one my sister-in-law, and one for myself.  Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of all 5 of them before I put them in the mail.  So I only have a photo of the one I kept.

They are not all exactly alike, but they are all mostly similar, the flowers are different colors and some of the big flowers were actual flower shaped yo-yos, and on two of the cards the cluster of small flowers on the left had sequence and bead centers instead of buttons.  Also the crazy quilt themed backgrounds were slighty varied, same fabrics, but different placement.

 I love how the greens pop in my photos right after a rain.  Over cast days are great for taking photos!

Basket full of Flowers

My friends birthday is today and I wanted to send her a special postcard to celebrate and I thought what could be better than a basket of flowers that is always in bloom.  I used my newest toys, two small yo yo makers, to make the flowers for this postcard.  My daughter even came over to help make the tiny ones.  They are fun and easy to make with the yo yo makers and I sewed them up while I waited for my turn at Scrabble on facebook.  :)  Then I added tiny buttons, poked some green leaves around the flowers, hand stitched the basket down, did some free motion quilting on the background and put a traditional quilt binding for the edging.  I love it.  It is one of my favorite cards.

I love collecting craft tools just as much as fabric and even though I haven't been collecting as much fabric lately, I still have been collecting tools.  These yo yo makers are my newest collection item.  I bought two larger circle yo yo makers last summer, and this past Christmas I received a flower and a heart yo yo maker - thanks Mom!  In January I bought the two smallest circle yo yo makers when they were half off at Hancock Fabrics.  Clover, the company who makes these tools, still has more for me to collect though:  the butterfly, the shamrock, the very largest circle (the Jumbo circle), and their newest design, the Oval.  You can see them all here.   If you are interested, Lazy Girl Designs has a wonderful pictorial tutorial on how to use these yo yo makers.

Simple Halloween Postcards

I made a few Halloween postcards the other day.  I always did like blue and yellow together, and since the fabric I fussy cut these images from was blue and yellow, I decided to keep those colors for the background of the Halloween cards.  Not your traditional holiday colors but they look good to me and I really like how the the yellow blanket stitch pops against the blue fabric.

Practicing My Needle work.

Fabric postcards are a wonderful size on which to practice my needle work.  You can really practice any technique you want on these little beauties.  And I can't think of anyone who doesn't like receiving them in the mail.  :)

Scarecrow Postcard

I love this postcard!  First of all I just love this scarecrow design.  he is on my Halloween hat as well as some other projects I have done. His hands, hair, and feet are all fringed.  The design comes from Embroidery Library.  I really enjoy their designs.

I didn't want this cutie of a scarecrow standing all alone on brown fabric, so I fussy cut some pumpkins to go underneath him.  But then the top looked too plain, so I added some wavy hand stitching to the top to represent the sky.  I love how it turned out.  Hopefully Lori will too.  She was my partner for this swap.

Autumn Postcards

I have been busy the past couple days working on some fall themed postcards for my swap groups. The two similar ones are for ladies in Stashbusters, and the Pumpkin Embroidered one flies out my partner in Fabricards.

Embroidered Daisies Postcard

I spent the afternoon working on this postcard.  At first I was in the process of cutting out purple fabric for a quilt I'm working on. But as I was cutting, out of the blue, I thought that four of these purple triangles would look great on a postcard.  So I fiddled with them on a blank 4x6 piece of peltex and started adding more fabrics.  Then I thought to myself, it would look great with some hand embroidery on it.  So I got out my DMC floss and fiddled around.  I am still a beginner hand embroiderer and this is the first time I have done straight stitching to make a design, but I think it turned out lovely.  Now I just need to decide who should receive this in the mail.  :)

Heat Wave

It sure has been a hot summer. Makes us want to stay in all the time. I am fine with that because that is where my sewing machine is. :) Fabricards had a postcard swap with the theme of "Heat" in honor of the heat waves some of the members were having. As soon as I saw that swap I immediately thought of an egg frying on a sidewalk. So I signed up and made this post card. The bottom of the card looked empty so I added the text "Heat Wave" in yellow. The letters turned out OK, but I do believe I need to work on my freehand letters a little more.

Foundation Piecing PC Swap

Here is another postcard I made for Fabricards. This one was for the Foundation Paper Piecing Swap. The original pattern was a square but I took the advice Janet gave me awhile ago and stretched it to fit a 4 x 6 postcard and I must say it turned out great! :)

It is fun using up my tiny scraps for projects like this. Makes me feel good that I didn't throw them away. Not that I would throw them out to begin with. It is always hard for me to throw fabric away, no matter how small it is.

Hand Embroidered Post Card

I really like hand embroidery, but I have to admit I am a real beginner. I bought a couple books a few months ago to help me learn some new stitches and I found myself spending more time pouring over those books instead of making the actual stitches. So for my 1 to 1 post card swap I decided to practice some of those stitches again instead of just looking at them. I pulled out one of my frog post card tops (I think I have about 20 left to finish) and got to work. I have to say these are some of my favorite postcards to make. I hope the recipient feels the same way. :)

Cat postcards

These are two of my long overdue cat postcards. They are now on in the mail traveling to their recipients. When I was making the faces, I put a smile on the first one, but then I didn't like it as much. So I left it off the next one. Later when I came back to look at them again, I realized I did like the smile after all. Go figure...

I am really enjoying paper piecing in such a small format. I just wish I could find more patters that fit the 4 x 6 size. Most of the ones I find are square. Which means I have to come up with something extra to fill the top and bottom of a postcard. This cat one was the first one I have found in rectangle from. Hmm, maybe I can work on making my own PP patterns... that is something to think about.

Spring Daffodil

Spring is here and it sure feels wonderful. The leaves are budding on the trees and the azaleas are blooming all over the place.

The March flower mingle for Fabricards was Daffodil, what a perfect postcard for the season. This is my version. I paper pieced this little flower and then added some beads and some yellow stitches to fancy it up a bit. The blue has very small stipple quilting all around it, but the thread I used blends in very well so it is hard to see in the photo. This will go out in tomorrow's post.

Showcasing Stitches

Some of these new sewing machines have some really fancy stitches, so I created a swap in Fabricards just for that. I also opened it up for some hand work too if some were interested in that, but I chose to do machine stitching for mine.

My pink center fabric has free motion quilting all over it and the green edges showcase three of the fancy stitches that come on my machine. I really like the way this one turned out. The colored thread I used for the machine stitches show up nice on the on the green background.

January Flower Mingle

In Fabricards we are doing a monthly Mingle swap that showcases the Birth flowers of the year. This is the card I made for the January flower, Carnation. I choose to print out this lovely yellow one on white muslin, then added some fancy stitches from my machine around it and some free motion quilting on the edges. I also made a couple more of these to mail out to my current Art2Mail group.