These burp cloths I made for my Mom's friend who is having a baby next month. I used the pattern from Embroidery Library, but I unstitched the back part of the diaper and lifted the back flap before I did the embroidery. That way I could close it back up and cover the not so pretty back of the embroidery design. I also changed the edging technique. I made it more like a quilt binding instead of trying to catch the front and the back of the edging with one pass through the sewing machine. I always seem to screw that up by either missing the back all together or sewing too far from the seam and then weaving to get to close to the edge, making the back look sloppy. So I finish it on the front first, turn it to the back and attach it with an invisible hand to close it up. It takes a little longer but looks 100% better than what would come out if I did it the other way.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Something Other Than Postcards...
These burp cloths I made for my Mom's friend who is having a baby next month. I used the pattern from Embroidery Library, but I unstitched the back part of the diaper and lifted the back flap before I did the embroidery. That way I could close it back up and cover the not so pretty back of the embroidery design. I also changed the edging technique. I made it more like a quilt binding instead of trying to catch the front and the back of the edging with one pass through the sewing machine. I always seem to screw that up by either missing the back all together or sewing too far from the seam and then weaving to get to close to the edge, making the back look sloppy. So I finish it on the front first, turn it to the back and attach it with an invisible hand to close it up. It takes a little longer but looks 100% better than what would come out if I did it the other way.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Fall Colors
Monday, November 3, 2008
Harvest Time
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Autumn Postcards
Friday, October 31, 2008
Happy Halloween
Thursday, October 30, 2008
V is for Violet
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Black and Orange
I saw this orange and black fabric at the store awhile ago and was automatically drawn to it. But, since I am on a fabric diet, I refrained from buying it. Later on in the month though, I had to make a witch costume for Halloween and the person who wanted the costume had specific color requests for the costume: the dress had to be black, orange, purple, and green. Well, I knew exactly where to go to get the orange and black. :) And since I always buy a little extra material for my projects, (in case I screw up) I had plenty left over to make these post cards. These cards were made for the ArtsNtheMail Black and Orange swap. From the beginning, I had envisioned embellishing the black squares with some orange something or other, but wasn't quite sure how I wanted to do it. Then I decided hand work was the way to go. I alternated between rows of Daisy flowers with a bead center and a row of clustered french knots. I love the way it turned out. The best part is running my fingers over the top and feeling the texture of the thread. I hope the ladies who receive them like them as much as me.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
IFQ ATC Round 10
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Halloween
These two were made for the Crazy Quit Halloween swap for Postcard Pizzazz. I am really loving the crazy quilt method. It is a great way to use up my small scraps that I can't bear to throw away.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Postcard Wallhanging
The Quilt looks totally different when there are no postcards in it. I meant to take a photo of it empty, but in my excitement to add the postcards I forgot to take a photo while there were no cards in it. Halfway through filling it up I remembered the camera. Instead of taking all the cards out, I just decided to take a picture of it the way it was, half full. So the first photo shows it half full and you can see some of the empty squares. The next photo shows it full of postcards from all the wonderful people in my postcard groups. It sure was hard to pick 48 cards to display since I have so many wonderful ones to choose from. I will have to swap them out frequently to enjoy them all.
This is a close up of the quilting I did in the sashing. I was in "Feather" mode after making those feather postcards so I did feathers through all the sashing. I found it more difficult to guide this quilt through the machine after stitching on such stiff small cards. What a challenge it was.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Crazy Quilt Blocks
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Spider Webs and Back to School
I sure wish the scanner would pick up the sparkle in the gems on the postcard. This was my first time glueing on gems to fabric. I meant to buy iron on gems, but when I saw the huge red discount sticker on these little blue gems I forgot that I wanted them to iron on. All I saw was cheap crystal gems. Not sure how to glue them on, I decided to get out my super glue. So far so good, they are holding on tight to that silver gray web.
The kids have been back to school since the end of August, and to celebrate that I joined the back to school swap in my Art4Mail group. The white "paper" is actually peltex. I was too lazy to dig out my white fabric, so I used the small extra rectangle pieces of peltex that for some reason I can't seem to throw away. :)
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Feathers and Pie
What do feathers and fruit pie have in common? Well hopefully you don't ever have feathers in your pie but, it may be possible to have a bird near you while you eat pie. But in this case, Feathers and Fruit Pie just happened to be the two postcard themes I was working on this week. The four postcards on the left are the ones I made for IFQ. The theme was feathers. A lot of the participants for the group had already posted photos of their creations and most of them had actual feathers on the cards. I was getting worried because the only idea I could think of was quilted feathers. For a moment I thought I should scrap my original idea and come up with one that had tangible feathers on it. But nothing was coming to mind other than quilted feathers. So I went to the IFQ site to re-read the stipulations for the swap. It didn't say we HAD to put feathers on the card, just to make sure that if we did, not to use real bird feathers since it might cause trouble at customs when they go out of the country. After reading the guidelines again, I decided to go ahead with my original idea. After all, quilted "feathers" were feathers in a sense. :) I want the quilting design to stick out in the card, so I chose a deep purple background as my base and then used a light pastel variegated thread to sew the feathers. They turned out stunning. I had such a good time making them and loved the way they turned out that I wanted to make even more. I ended up making a total of 5, but on the last one I ran out of thread!! I had all the feathers done on it, but I didn't have enough thread to finish the stippling in between the feathers. I did have a double pink twist thread which I ended up using to finish the last card, and as I laid them all out to look at, I had to look very closely to see which one had the pink thread on it.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Is it Autumn yet?
It's a good thing I kept them. they were perfect for the cards I had planned to make. So I went to my closet and got them right out of the bin they were in. I may keep lots of things, but I know where almost everything is. I seem to have a bin for everything and everything fits into a bin. :)
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Pizzazz QTCs
Postcard Pizzazz had a quite a few QTC swaps with colors as themes. One of them was called Summer Glitz 2 for 1. We each made a gold and silver QTC and sent it to our partners. Here are my two. In the beginning I read the rules wrong and was making ONE card with silver and gold on it. So that is why my silver card has some traces of gold. I had already finished the silver one when I realized my mistake. But the ladies in my swap said they were fine receiving the silver card the way it was. I was glad of that otherwise I would have had to make another whole set of silver ones.
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These were made for the Pink QTC swap. I took bits and pieces of all my pink fabrics and ironed them onto the peltex and then added a chain stitch to cover up the raw edges. Then I added some form of embellishment to all the pieces, except the very thing pink stripped one at the very bottom left. It was too small to add anything. I didn't want it to get stuck under the needle down there while I had to sew on the edging. These were the only ones I remembered to take a group photo of. The others I had put in envelopes and had them ready to mail out. So I had to take a photo of the ones I saved for myself.
This one is my version of a BLUE QTC. The center blue is what was leftover from me trying to make blue inchies. It is s stiff piece of Peltex covered with some light blue fabric. I can't seem to throw anything away. Even if it is only one inch. I think to myself, I can use that in some other project in the future. And sure enough, the little one inch covered square finally found a new home on this blue QTC.
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I liked the feel and texture of the raised blue square on my blue QTC, so I decided to try that same technique in my purple QTCs. This time I punched out the letter P in purple covered peltex. Instead of sewing it down with yarn, as I did in the blue QTCs, I used a blanket stitch to hold the letter down. Underneath the P is some shiny purple fabric. It is hard to tell that it shines on the photo, but in person it looks great. I couched some cording around the shiny fabric to hide its raw edges, and then finished the corners of the card with some free motion quilting. Once all the QTCs have been traded I will have a wonderful unique rainbow in 3.5in x 2.5in rectangles.
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My time wasn't used making just QTCs lately, I also made a regular sized postcard.
I had plenty of butterflies and dragonflies left over from my Jars and Bottles Swap, so I used them for a few more postcards for my Art2Mail #46 swap. This time I added some grass for them to fly around in with a nice blue sky and the card wouldn't be complete without some free motion quilting in the graa and sky.