Postcards & postcard holder

Above is yesterday's post - a spring card from Kathleen and an Under the Sea card from Beth. I spent most of the day yesterday working on the postcard holder, and it's coming along really well - I just have to quilt it now - not sure quite what I am going to do - something simple, probably just stitch in the ditch or straight lines or something - don't need to detract from the cards. It also had the advantage of using up some small scraps of hand-dyes I have knocking about. Nowhere near the amount I have around, of course, but at least there's a small dent. Very small.

When I dug out the black and grey hand-dyes to use with the postcard holder, I was reminded of the original project I was going to use them in - a shoe quilt (wallhanging, probably) with windows, and shoes in the centre. So I decided that as long as the fabric was out, I'd cut some grey and black and do a little work on the windows - it's not the sort of thing I want to do a lot of at once, as half the corners have Y-seams. I have collected shoe fabrics for this project for quite a while, and have lots of them. Mostly FQs, but in some cases, more. Not sure what I'll do with all the leftovers, as this project needs less volume and more variety. I do have an idea for a postcard to use some of them, but it won't use much, frankly...

Today, I didn't do any sewing, though I did do some sewing related things - I went to see my friend Brenda, who runs a mini-quilt shop from her house. I often go up and check out the new books, and today, she had another quilting friend there working on a group quilt. I came home with a few books - the Art Quilt workbook will be fun to look at, and might give some ideas for smaller pieces if I get stuck. The book cover art book I bought less for the ideas for what to put on book covers (i have lots of those) than for the methods - just easier to have a reference than to always try to work out what the best way of making flaps or end pockets is or how to deal with the book' spine, etc. And the Soduko quilts book is actually for Sarah, who I thought might enjoy doing a Soduko quilt for her next project, once she finishes this one.

The postcard is part of the EuroSwap swap, and is from Smaranda in France - she's used painted Lutradur and machine quilting & it's one of those cards that looks much better in person - the colours, for one thing, are much better.