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.

Halloween Costumes

I have been very busy crafting this week, just not with needle and thread.  I spent most my days making these two Lego men. Two of my sons and I saw something similar on the internet and they decided they really wanted to be Lego men for Halloween.  So I told them to bring me a couple of their Lego men and I would give it a try.  My daughter wanted to be a cave woman, and we threw her costume together in the hour before my husband's work Halloween party tonight.  I didn't even use thread for her costume, just tied it around her.  I really wanted to spend more time on hers, but those Lego men took way longer than I anticipated.  4 days of non stop work.  I didn't even clean house or make dinners.  My husband took care of the dinner part, but now I have a really messy house to take care over the weekend.  My youngest son's costume was store bought.  It is the first one I even remember buying as a mater of fact.  I was feeling really bad about that and the fact that I didn't get to make his, but when he said, "This is the best costume I ever had!" and really meant it, then I didn't feel so bad.  The kids all had a good time at the Halloween party and the Lego men sure did get a lot of attention and each Lego man won a $25 gift card for second place in the costume contest.  :)

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.  

:)

Fall Into Fall Giveaway Winner!

The day has arrived.  It is time to announce the winners of the Fall into Fall Giveaway.
On October 1,  143 bloggers all over blog land posted giveaways.
I was one of those bloggers and today is the day to announce all the winners.  

The winner of my giveaway is....

JayTee of JayTee's Patchwork Place!

Congratulations!!

Thank you all for entering my giveaway.
I really enjoyed visiting all the new blogs and reading all of your favorite pumpkin recipes.
I am definitely going to have to google recipes for them!

Happy Fall Y'all!

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.

Halloween Table Runner

I grabbed one of my favorite Halloween fabrics and some coordinating fabrics to go with it and put together this table runner.  The pattern comes from Karie Patch Designs and is call Served with a Twist.  I love how the 4 patches in the center aren't your traditional 4 patches, the purple fabric is all twisted up.

And just like the peppermint pincushions, I made two of these.
I kept one for myself and gave the other to my sister.  

This is my outdoor kitty Rex.
While I photographed the table runner, He wanted to play and stretch out in the newly made shade.  Even though it is Autumn, the temps are still in the 80's here in the afternoons.

Sunday Doodling

 I spend a lot of time on Sundays just doodling.  Today I finished up this picture that I have been working on the past three Sundays.  Usually I just doodle shapes and lines and cover a whole page, but my husband said he wanted me to turn those lines into something he could recognize, so I made this picture of a waterfall.  Then I added color.  Usually I just work in black and white but for this one I felt the need to add color.

These are what my drawings usually look like. Random doodles all merged into each other. This one has my niece's name mixed into it.

Fall Into Fall Giveaway

Debi is hosting a Fall Into Fall Giveaway.  She has gathered 151 different bloggers, 8 of those are business bloggers, and each one is offering a give away.  I am one of them. WAHOO!!

My give away today is pattern for a 43" x 48" Autumn Wallhanging, 3 fat quarters of my most favorite Halloween fabrics, and a Halloween fabric postcard of your very own to mail out to whom ever you wish.

To enter, just leave a comment and tell me the name of your favorite Pumpkin Recipe.

Mine is Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake.   mmmmm

The winner will be drawn on October 15th.

Good luck and happy blog hopping.



*UPDATE*    *UPDATE*

The winner is....

JayTee of JayTee's Patchwork Place!

Congratulations!!

Peppermint Pincushions

I used the free pattern from Connecting Threads to make these two pincushions.

One is for me, and the other is going to be put up for auction during my guild's "Make It, Bake It, Sew It, Grow It" auction at our next meeting.

I decided to make two at once because based on past experience when I say, "I will make one for me later on", it always turns out that later never comes and I never get one for myself.  So this time I cut out enough fabric to make two and now I have one to give and one to keep.

This one is mine.

My son Thomas liked the button better on this one so that is why I picked this one to keep.

Finished Blue and Yellow Quilt

 I finally got my cats to behave and finished quilting this blue and yellow quilt that was made by a guild member. I had wanted to do some crosshatching on the blue border to match the straight line quilting in the nine patches, but the borders were so wavy, there was no way I could have done that without having fabric fold over on itself, so I went with some pretty big swirls for that part.








For the appliquéd circles, I wanted to turn them into flowers with the quilting.  I wanted them to be uniform so I decided I better mark the quilt.  Something I try to avoid at all costs if I can, mainly due to laziness. But some designs call for uniformness and so I must mark the quilt.  I started out tracing one of the appliquéd circles onto a piece of paper and then drew equal sized petals all around it.  I then cut it out and was about to mark each and every circle when it dawned on me, why not just pin the paper to the quilt and quilt around it.  That will save time marking and time removing marks later.  It worked out great and no marking!

Break Time

My kitties obviously don't want me to sew today.  Usually Jasper sits beside me, but this time he wanted to be like Sheen and sit on the quilt I am working on.  They must be tag teaming me today, taking turns hopping up next to me.  So I decided to take a break and post my newest finish.

This quilt below is another quilt being donated to the Boys Home.  It was made by one of the ladies in my quilt guild and I offered to quilt it for her. It is made of all flannel and she didn't want any batting.  I decided to go with some straight line quilting for this one.  It turned out to be exactly what this quilt needed.

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.  

He's at it again...

Here is my kitty Sheen.  You may think he is just watching me sew this fabric bowl, but no, he is waiting for his chance to attack the cord hanging down ....

Caught in the act!

He makes my sewing come to a complete halt on more than one occasion since I don't want to risk getting his paw with my needle.  After a few minutes of letting him play with the cord, I sent him on his way so I could finish my project.