Keeping Me Busy

When I wasn't working on the postcard tutorial (see previous post), I spent most of last week quilting a couple of quilts for others on my HQ16.

The first is Amber's bright quilt -- my friend Susan helped her make this and I think they both did a great job. No wavy borders for a machine quilter to deal with -- Susan taught her well! You can read about it on Susan's blog here.

The second quilt was made by my friend Moddy who can't seem to go 2 weeks without making a quilt top. This one is for her daughter -- I just meandered with mostly loops and a few leaves in places where I thought they might be visible on the very busy fabrics. You can see more of Moddy's quilts by clicking on the "Moddy's quilts" label on my blog sidebar.

Fabric Selvage Postcard Tutorial

As promised, here is my attempt at a tutorial. There are several other postcard tutorials out there on the net, but I've tweaked them a bit to make what works for me. If you make a selvage postcard using these instructions, please let me know if you had any difficulty following the steps. And, of course, I'd love to see your final results! And if I can get it to work, I plan to make a PDF file available on my blog someday. Updated -- link to the PDF is on my blog's sidebar.

This tutorial is for non-commercial personal use ONLY. Feel free to share with others, but please give the author (me) credit. NO COMMERCIAL USE ALLOWED. Thanks.

Supplies --

-- one 4 1/2" x 6 1/2" piece of white/cream fabric for the back of the postcard

-- one 4 1/2" x 6 1/2" piece of fusible fleece (fusible on one side only)

-- one 4 1/4" x 6 1/4" piece of fusible web (I used Heat 'n Bond Lite)

-- thread (at first I thought I'd use red, but changed my mind to pink after I had the selvages arranged)

-- permanent fabric marker

-- fabric selvages

__________________________________________

1. Center the fusible web on the wrong side of the white fabric and iron on. When cool, remove the paper backing. Set aside.

_________________________________________

2. On the fusible fleece (fusible side up), arrange the selvages the way you like, making sure to overlap the finished edge of a selvage on top of the unfinished edge of the previous selvage. Once you have decided on a design, with the iron gently fuse the selvages onto the fleece. This will help keep the selvages on while you sew them on the machine.

___________________________________________

3. Sew the selvages onto the fusible fleece, sewing very closely to the finished edge of each selvage strip. In this sample I used a straight stitch, but I've also used a small zigzag stitch at times.

___________________________________________

4. Trim the selvages to about 1/4" all the way around the fusible fleece. Discard the trimmed off pieces of selvage (unless they're long enough to be used in a future project).

___________________________________________

5. If your sewing machine has an alphabet stitch and you choose to embroider a message across the front of the postcard, press the unfinished edge of another selvage piece under (wrong sides together) 1/4" or so.

___________________________________________

6. Sew this selvage strip on, sewing very closely to the pressed edge. Here I've used a straight stitch, but a fancy stitch would look nice, too.

___________________________________________

7. Stitch your message on this strip, making sure you don't start or finish too close to the edge (the card will be trimmed a bit later). You could also just stitch the message on one of the selvages already on the card if there is enough white space.

___________________________________________

8. Center the white fabric on the unfusible side of the fleece and fuse the pieces together. Let it cool.

___________________________________________

9. Trim the card to 4" x 6".

___________________________________________

10. Satin stitch all the way around the edges of the card.

___________________________________________

11. Using a permanent fabric marker, write "POSTCARD" on the top of the back side. Write your message and heat set the writing. (I usually add my personal label before I satin stitch around the edges).

___________________________________________

12. Add a FIRST CLASS STAMP (not a postcard stamp) and take it to the post office to be hand-cancelled. Don't let the clerk tell you it needs additional postage! I've sent these (from at least three different post offices) to Oregon, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, North Carolina, and a number of other states, as well as locally with no problem at all.

___________________________________________

That's it. Have fun!

To see samples of my postcards, just click on the "postcard" label on my blog's right sidebar.

Nine-Patch Overload

The last set of 16 blocks in the nine-patch swap that I signed up for this summer has arrived. I'm amazed at the variety and can't wait to put them all together into a charity quilt.

You can see the other two sets here and here.

Thank you to Anina of Twiddletails for organizing the swap!

Just A Little Thank You

I've been the lucky winner of a few giveaways this summer, so I made these selvage postcards as little thank you notes to the bloggers who have been so generous.

The pink one is for the ladies at Quilt Taffy, Corrie and Des, who picked me as the winner of the fabric you see in this post. The only selvage in the postcard is from that piece of fabric.


Megan, the Mad Quilting Librarian, picked me as the winner of a lovely pack of black and white charm squares in her giveaway in July.

And the last, but certainly not least, is for my fellow Pennsylvanian Nancy of Blogging, Near Philadelphia to thank her for the checkbook pattern that she no longer needs.

Thank you to all you generous bloggers!

I have had several people ask me how I make these, so I'm seriously thinking of coming up with a tutorial. That's my goal for the weekend. Stay tuned...

Look What I Did!

The Internet is a wonderful thing -- I recently found a great video showing how to neatly fold fat quarters so that no raw edges are exposed. Isn't my pile pretty?


And it started out like this...

I even figured out how to fold a half-yard of fabric (the red and white check) in a similar fashion.

Cool, huh?

You can watch the video below...it's surprisingly easy to do. If you have trouble seeing the video on my blog, go here.

It's Been A While

I've been busy making postcards lately (you'll see a few more later this week) and haven't had much time to work on my DJ quilt. Here's the first block I've made in 3 weeks.

It's "I-7, Mac and Muff", an intermediate-level block that I chose to paper piece and then added the itty-bitty triangles using the raw-edge machine-buttonhole stitch method. Those teensy-weensy triangle pieces are even smaller than the ones seen here.

Mystery Solved

The wonderful quilt shop in Wellsboro, Needles, recently ran an 8-month mystery quilt project. Although I didn't participate, I was invited to see the revealing of some of the quilts a few days ago. You can see the lovely projects in this photo -- sorry about the so-so quality...it was early evening with very bad lighting.

Every quilt is different because each quilter picked her own fabrics for the project. Nice job, ladies.

You can click on the picture to see a closer view.