Postcards, postcards, postcards—-it’s that time again

Yes, it’s that time again, i. e., time for our guild members to make 2000 (we hope!!) fabric postcards for the upcoming Voices in Cloth 2018 quilt show, March 17-18, 2018.  For a small donation, you can take these home with you from the show, a little reminder of the fabric arts that you have  seen on display.

Also, I have been helping people get addicted to making these beauties, since my addiction is pretty well-established.  The tutorial on the “Postcards” tab above will show folds how the cards for our show should be constructed.

Here are a few card examples, all made by ME!   I’m finally getting around to having fun with some of the fabrics and ideas that I have had since our last show two years ago.  Hope you enjoy.

 

My experimentation with hand-embroidered motifs.  I used small motifs from vintage embroidery transfers, sometimes even using the “test” motifs:

 

My favorite cats from prior years are still fun for me:

 

And now I have some favorite dogs:

 

And some very talented chickens:

 

Cards made from scraps from finished projects, both mine and those of others:

 

My experimentation with ribbons:

 

And last, but not least, the cool cowboy/cowgirl/horse cards, from fabric that I have had for many years and not figured out how to use on the small cards.  I am pleased with the finished products:

I promise you an update on the quilts, too, but this card phase is not over for me yet.

 

Fabric Postcards–Voices in Cloth 2018

The Postcard Group is gearing up for helping our guild members make at least 2000 postcards as a fund-raising effort for our guild’s upcoming quilt show in March of 2018.  Previous East Bay Heritage Quilters Voices in Cloth shows have been fabulous (of course I say this, but they really are!!), and our postcards have been a big hit.

Two new updates to the postcard-making process for our guild members.  We have listened to you and are hoping to make this effort easier in the following two ways:

Starting:  We will begin to provide pre-made bases for your designs, since some members had difficulty getting started.  We hope these will appeal to you and inspire further embellishment, stitching, or whatever you feel like adding.

Some of these bases look like this:

Sample bases

Finishing:  We will fuse and edge-stitch your postcards for you if you like.  Simply turn in the finished postcard tops, and we have volunteers who will do the rest.

Here are a few of the cards that have been turned in so far:

By Susan Peck

By Susan Peck

Made by me.  As usual, I could not resist making as many as possible from a small scrap of donated fabric:

 

And other anonymous ones;  if you are the artist, let me know and I will included your name here.

Much more to show you in the weeks/months to come.

 

Just a few more EBHQ postcard makers

As promised, here are just a few of the many, many fabric postcards made by EBHQ members other than me.

These are ones that have already been turned in for our fabulous postcard fund-raiser at the upcoming Voices in Cloth 2016 Show (Click HERE for the link to the show details).

Please come to the show and stop by the postcard station by the windows.  This is your chance to make a small donation to our guild and take a little work of art home with you, to share with a friend or keep for yourself.

I have also included a few cards whose maker’s names I didn’t catch, for a variety of reasons.  If you recognize these, let me know and I will update the photos.

Jenny Alexich

Marcia Alpert

Anonymous 1

Anonymous 2  Woven Ribbons

 

Nancy Brown

Sonia Callahan

Mary Gilkerson

Lorraine Oller

Orna Pascal

Susan Peck

 

Nancy Redmond

 

Claire Sherman

I hope you enjoy this wide variety of artistic styles.  Trust me— there are even more in the approximately 1,500 cards that will be at the Show.

See you there.

Fabric Postcards: more new ones

My guild members of East Bay Heritage Quilters are again taking up the task of making fabric postcards for the show in March of next year, and some of the finished ones are already coming in.  I LOVE seeing what other fabric artists will do with this same 4″ x 6″ empty canvas.

I hope you are inspired by their work.

Here are six by Orna Pascal:

 

And seven from Claire Sherman:

And just a few of the ones I am playing with.  I have had barrels of fun using this pre-WonderUndered fabric donated by Marion Ongerth.  I think they were the leftovers from her projects, and I LOVE leftovers, even those from someone else.

 

I can barely begin to describe how much I love this cat fabric!

And sometimes the fabric speaks for itself.

HOT TIP  for making the postcard process easier:

My new favorite sewing machine foot, called an Open Embroidery Foot, which makes applying decorative stitches to the body of the cards and the zigzag stitches to the edges of the cards SOOOOOO much easier.  You can actually see exactly where you are sewing.

The foot for my machine looks like this:

 

Have fun making these yourself.

See the Postcard Gallery tab at the top of my Homepage and/or click Here to view the postcard tutorial.

Fabric postcards: still going strong

I have not posted anything recently about fabric postcards, even though I have made more than 250 of them since the Voices in Cloth 2014 Show last spring.  I found I could not stop making them.  It was way too much fun.

Here are a few of the couple dozen I made for Halloween.

I made approximately  35 for the Christmas season, and they were gobbled up by some guild members.  Soooooo, I made a few zillions more, but I made them in January, when I had plenty of time.  Here are a few of them.

More Santas . . . .

Vintage Christmas card images . . . .

A few more Santas . . . .

and more . . . .

And then I switched to  BACON, thanks to the leftover scraps from making a shirt for my brother.  Fab fabric!

And just a few more;  I think I want to make a lot of the “Thank You” cards.  What an easy way to send gratitude through the mail.

Wheel Medallion sneak peek

Finished days before it was to be displayed  at my guild’s Voices in Cloth 2014 quilt show late last month, my Wheel Medallion has been one of my most challenging endeavors in recent times.

Having taken a class with Becky Goldsmith of Piece o’ Cake fame, I felt I was much more able to execute this applique technique.  So I incorporated the applique border into a medallion quilt I had been struggling with working on.

Not yet photographed professionally, this quilt can only be seen in these partial shots for now.

Stay tuned for a better picture of the complete quilt.

I love the result, and this quilt already has a cousin under construction, using all of the leftover pieces that did not fit into the design of this quilt.  So stay tuned for that, too.

 

And, on a recurring note, I am finding that I have not yet shaken the fabric postcard bug.

These are a particular favorite here where I live:

 

And these were made for a friend’s Cinco de Mayo-themed engagement party:

I will probably keep doing these wonderfull little gems, just because they are soooo fun (and are completed sooooo quickly).

Fabric postcards galore

The postcard project is producing some very nice works, and I thought it was time to showcase some of the wonderful EBHQ fabric postcard artists, including Sonia Callahan, Meg Nixon, Rosemary Corbin, Susan Peck, Claire Sherman, and me.  I have remembered a few names of the names, and I’m sure I have forgotten others.  Please let me know if I need to include your name here.

It’s so much fun to see the variety of fabrics and techniques that we all have used for these small pieces.

The various themes include . . . . .   Christmas

Birthdays

Animals

Other characters

Free form designs

These little gems are lots of fun to do, once you have made a few to get yourself familiar with the techniques.  Let me know it you want to make some, too.

Forgotten Quilt; Halloween Postcards

While looking through my old photo files for pictures of the Christmas stockings I had previously made, I came across a picture of a quilt that I had forgotten about.  The picture is one taken for the EBHQ historian at the Voices in Cloth 2008 quilt show.  I did not keep this quilt long enough for it to be professionally photographed.  It was donated to a women’s clinic in Africa, when EBHQ still had a means of getting these items there.

Triad II, 2008

I also remember that this quilt was problematic in many ways.   It started in an EBHQ workshop on color in quilts taught by Christine E. Barnes.  She uses “mock blocks” to teach color and other artistic concepts to quilters.  (see her book Color: The Quilter’s Guide for all the details)  Below is the mock block I made in class, and I loved it.

Time to make a full quilt.  I changed the center square to a red-purple (magenta), creating a triad color scheme.

Finding the turquoise, yellow-orange, and magenta fabrics for the quilt was difficult, especially when I needed them in different values.  There was not much dark turquoise in the local fabric stores.

Then, finding an appropriate fabric for sashing between the blocks was even harder, since I had boxed myself into this specific color scheme.  I love the puzzle aspect of this art form, but this one was not so much fun.  The sashing fabric turned out to be in my own stash;  it was a fabric manufactured by the children’s clothing company Mousefeathers in Berkeley, and a wild print it was.

Anyway, after struggling with finding fabrics, putting them together, working out the math, and developing a quilting pattern, I was happy to see this one finished, ready for display at the quilt show,  and I loved it.  But NO ONE else did.  Too bright, unusual colors, whatever.  So off it went to keep someone continents away safely bundled.

AND

Just for fun with the upcoming holiday—-some more postcards.  I loved making these from some old Alexander Henry fabrics I found heavily discounted after Halloween one year.  Some of these images were incomplete, but they still worked in this small format.  I even had to give the torn Frankie a few extra sutures on his neck;  seemed to do the trick.

Yes, more EBHQ postcards

I’m really pleased to see all these postcards made by EBHQ’s many wonderful members.  I hope this is a fun exercise for all who participate.  So many different styles are emerging, and I’m happy to see them all.

Everybody make MORE!!  If you need supplies, a consult, a demo or answers to your questions, see Contact Susan above.

Here are all the latest, made by (in no particular order) Jean Wolslegel, Meg Goldman, Andrea Segall, Susan Peck, and Meg Nixon.  Enjoy.

__________________________________________

More from me:

I told you it was addictive.   Did you really  think I could stop????

Cutting up an unfinished project from a Laura Wasilowski workshop at EBHQ, I made thisbut could not stop.

ending up with all these:

And, because I still can’t throw anything away, I made these from the scraps after trimming the above flowers:

“Kinda vintage” quilt and more postcards

Blue Check Sashed Squares

I describe this quilt as “kinda vintage” because all the pinks are vintage feed sack fabrics from my collection, and the multicolored plaid in the sashing is also a vintage fabric. These coarse feed sack fabrics often have wild designs, and I wanted to keep the square large to showcase these fun patterns, as well as to mimic the 30″s “utility quilts” , the quilts that the family actually uses, as opposed to those put on the bed in the guest room when company was visiting.

The blue gingham is the odd ball here, since it was found on the sale table at a local discount store.  The store had multiple bolts of this fabric available in October as the perfect choice when making a Wizard of Ox Dorothy costume for Halloween.  But it was perfect for my intended use as well.Blue Check Sashed Squares, 1999   61″ x 72″     Photography by Sharon Risedorph

And because the fabrics are so dominant, the quilting needed to be plain.  Simple single and double diagonal lines made interesting patterns withing the blocks and sashing units.

Blue Check Sashed Squares, detail

This quilt was photographed for the wonderful book Cotton Candy Quilts by Mary Mashuta,  and my only regret is that I did not think to photograph the back of this beauty, since it, too, was made using vintage feed sacks, the really wild ones.  Click here to read more about the humble feed sack  and its place in quilting history.

This quilt has recently found a new home and I hope it will give some pleasure.

More fun EBHQ fabric postcards

Speaking of Halloween, I have gone a little crazy recently with these Alexander Henry Halloween fabric scraps from a long-ago (and still unfinished) project.  I love the wild graphics of the heads, and the color combinations are right up my alley, so I played and played.  I don’t think these are out of my system yet, so there may be more.

I even found a way to use these scraps when part of the image was missing.  This postcard thing is addictive.

And just one more for some special relatives:

EBHQ postcard people:  Send me pix of your postcards for this site.  I’d love to see what you have designed!