Incoming: Fabric Postcards!

At some point in January, I was talking to some people in the Quilting community on Livejournal about making/exchanging fabric postcards, and they were interested in setting up a swap. It took a little while before I got around to it, but we had our first exchange in March, and these are the five postcards I received. Eventually I'll write up a post showing the six cards that I made (five to send for the exchange, and one that I did a little tutorial video about), but I've got more things to talk about than time to talk about them.

"Be Still" postcard a photo by hold your spin on Flickr.

The person who made this card, Mrs-Dragon, had posted pictures of her cards before they all arrived and they were all gorgeous, but I was instantly drawn to the red one, mainly because red is my favourite colour. How lucky did I turn out to be to get the red postcard! She "made" the background fabric out of scraps using a wash-away fusible and then did sketchy-style drawing with thread on it to read Be Still and of course to trace on the heart. I LOVE the sketchy look that this quilting technique offers. And I'm pretty massively impressed by the fact that she bound the postcard. I've done proper binding once only and swore never to do it again. (It's HARD binding something so small.)

Sugar skull postcard a photo by hold your spin on Flickr.

This postcard I received from the lovely ofenjen (who blogs at Sewhooked.org. I really love the sugar skull motif, and also the sort of sweet spring colours of the card, incongruous though they might be. She added some really cool bits of quilting - a few scattered circles and some other quilted patterns along the edges of the green and yellow bits of fabric. Lovely.

Quill and Parchment postcard a photo by hold your spin on Flickr.

And then this postcard arrived from the also lovely Cosmic Twirling. She cut the shapes out using a Cricut, fused, and machine appliquéd them down. I was so surprised by how accurately the cricut cuts fabric, especially since it's meant to be used with paper. CosmicTwirking does a fair bit of paper crafting, so she also used some stamping on this card, both the words on the front, and a really cool postcard stamp on the back that divides the card into an Address side and a side for a note. I really love the fabrics she chose, especially for the background of the card. LOVE the black print.

Butterfly Mosaic postcard a photo by hold your spin on Flickr.

This was the first of two postcards to arrive from Indigoiiis. She sent them at the same time, but the second one took an extra week and change to show up. In any case, this postcard? WOW. Can you imagine cutting out so very many quarter in squares of fabric and getting them all put together in exactly the right way to make it look like a butterfly with similar wing patterns on either side.

The gold ribbon for binding is really beautiful, a lovely frame around the edge and shiny, which is always fun. Indigoiiis says she won't do that type of binding again, and I can't blame here, it would be really difficult to pull off easily, I think.

Ribbons postcard a photo by hold your spin on Flickr.

And finally, my last postcard to arrive, from Indigoiiis. One this card, she used a mix of fabrics and ribbons, serged together in strips. I love the serged edges with the teal thread - I wouldn't have thought serging would show itself so well, but it really looks polished on these cards. This card had a really neat Ukrainian postcard blank printed onto the fabric used for the backing. (My Russian brother in law read it for me.) I thought that was a really fun touch to add to the postcard.

So eventually I'll get a post up with my postcards on it. Eventually...