How is everyone today? I hope you are making it through the holiday season with joy in your hearts. I had a joyful moment this week when I heard from Pat who lives in Marion, LA who wrote to tell me that she saw my “Comin’ Down The Chimney” quilt pattern in McCall’s and had wanted to make one herself for the holidays but ran out of time. When Pat arrived at her quilt guild party, she was happy to see that ten, yes, ten! of these quilt tops were made up and being given as door prizes! Pat won one!! I’m so happy for her. The guild gave the main applique part of the quilt as the prize and the recipients can finish them up however they choose. I thought that was one awesome idea! Pat and her friend, Theresa, were kind enough to send me photos of the quilt tops they won. Pat is also trying to locate a photo that shows all ten quilt tops displayed at the party. Here are their prizes…

Thank you Pat and Theresa! Enjoy the quilts!!!

Last week while I was on the treadmill, I watched an episode of The Quilt Show with Jan Krentz. Jan was showing how you could use striped fabrics in your quilts for maximum “wow” with little effort!
I kept thinking about her techniques and went to Joann’s to find a square ruler and some striped fabric. I made up this little quilt to in a very short amount of time last night.

I used the marking on the ruler with the striped markings on the fabric and made up these blocks. It was easy and I like that it looks like I spent more time than I did. My oldest daughter has laid claim to this when it is finished. I wished I had put them together a bit more wonky though and not so symmetrical. The reason being that I don’t love how the very center diamond came out. The actual center of that one looks off because of the how the stripes fall on the fabric, whereas in the rest of the diamonds, the centers all came out perfect because the stripes were lined up just so. No matter which way I turned things, it wasn’t going to be perfect in that center diamond. Next time, I’ll purposely make it all not quite match up and then it will be more a little more “fun” looking.

As some of you may know, I did a postcard swap with Sandy of Quilting From The Rest Of Us. We both made a fabric postcard following directions from American Patchwork and Quilting (December issue). I think we both agree, that it was an easy and fun project and it was very exciting to receive one in the mail! Here is the postcard I received from Sandy…

How beautiful is that????????? The colors are gorgeous, the decorative stitches are fun and the whole thing was a joy to receive! We’ve decided to make it a tradition to send one to each other in the coming years. I thought I’d share some photos of how I made my postcard that went to Sandy. We both have different styles and of course mine was to use fusible applique. Here is a brief tutorial of how the making of the postcard went down….by the way, the post office hand stamped these for us and it cost about .45 cents or so to mail.

This is a 4″x 6″ piece of double sided fusible Peltex with the front fabric fused to it and then trimmed down even with the Peltex.

I recently purchased this Christmas Sizzix die on clearance and decided to pull it out for this project. I could have designed my own ornaments but quick and easy was the name of the game here. You could use clip art as a template as well. I placed fusible web on the back of the fabrics being used for the ornaments and then die cut them and fused them to the postcard.

Here they are fused. In hind sight, I wish I had fussy cut more of the fabric for the ornaments but I was trying to stick to a certain color scheme and I knew these fabrics worked well together as I had used them in my Disappearing 9 Patch.

Here I used blanket stitch and zig zag to quilt the postcard and at the same time secure the applique. This was all done on machine before I placed the backing fabric on the postcard. Here you can see that I have finished stitching and I have fused the backing fabric to the Peltex. Now you can’t see my stitching on the back of the postcard. I then trimmed the backing even with the postcard.

Once the fusing was finished, I did a zig zag around the edge. Next time, I would run a second zig zag right over the first so it stands out more. I was having some machine trouble at this point for some reason and didn’t want to have a second go around with it. I could have also done a regular binding as Sandy did.

I used a ruler and a permanent marker to draw the address lines and to separate the address section from the message section. I used permanent markers to write the message and address.

So there you have it! Voila…a fabric postcard!

I am off to finish Christmas shopping and hopefully quilt something today!
Sandi