Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Quilted Postcards

In 2009, I booked Nancy Dickey to speak about designing a winning quilt at our local guild. While talking with her about the lecture, she mentioned that she liked to teach a quilted postcard workshop for guilds and asked if we were interested.  I had heard of these before and since I had enjoyed making trading cards so much I decided to give it a try too.
She had little kits for us and several step outs and examples. We were making a layered raw edge applique flower.  We got to play with Angelina fibers, fusible, decorative stitches and tulle.
Angelina fibers, for those who don't know, look like cotton candy fluff.  It comes in all different colors, in little bags like these:
 It comes in different "cuts", this is the finest
- it is like baby fine hair:
Lay it out thin and a build it up to the thickness you want.  
*Thin will be see through but shimmery and shiny*
*Thick layers will show the color of the Angelina more and add shine and shimmer without being able to see through it* 


When laying out your Angelina fibers lay them on one side of a Teflon sheet and then fold the other half of the sheet over and run a hot iron over it.  All the fluffy fibers collapse and melt together where ever the iron ran over them.  Once it cools the fibers peel right off in one flat piece. The Angelina gave a nice shimmer in the postcards and I was additionally excited because I had found this stuff a couple years ago, bought a bunch and then never used it! It had a purpose now! 
The tulle was interesting on the post cards, it made whatever was behind it seem a bit farther away so suddenly our pieces had depth and appeared more three dimensional.
After the first card we were encouraged to try some designs of our own.

I had bought this Elvis Presley fabric a few months before planning to make something for my mother in law who was a fan. I found some of my hand dyed fabric and some batiks that looked pretty good with it. Off I went. It was like this fabric was made to be embellished it was really fun once I got started.
Quilters Crossing is doing a Valentine postcard swap. No purchase necessary to participate. Just drop off a quilted postcard by February 9th. This is my entry:
You will receive one $5 coupon on your next purchase for participating and you'll get a postcard in the mail from one of the other people participating! Win, win!

1 comment:

  1. Oh my gosh! Your nails are SO super cute!!

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