Sunny (for once) Saturday's roundup

Postcard round-up: the funky lady is Olivia's finished postcard for the kids' swap on ArtsintheMail - she did the edging and added some jewels in strategic places. The airplane card is for the Summer Swap, and is by Melinda, who says it's 105F where she live - no wonder her sun is blazing hot. She's used a combination of paper and fabric to great effect. That card actually came yesterday, but I forgot about it, as I got sidetracked with the list of my favourites.... The triangle card is for the triangle swap (duh) and is from Diane B, who recently lured me into joining a new group (the Fiber Art Bits group). And finally, the tea cup with flowers is from Roberta, and is for the Open Theme Swap for EuroQuilt - a bit belated, but a nice card nonetheless. And I'm not that bothered about late cards (as long as it's not the same person time and again) - after all, we all have times when life scuppers our plans to create art.

And now, on to what I did myself today. First, I put the border on the floral quilt, and pieced the backing (of which I have spared you a photo as it's not at interesting), so that's ready to go be quilted. Hoorah. We might actually make the deadline of 21 July with time to spare. And I got my inchie charms ready for posting - strung them into groups of five and added tags, so they can go out on Monday - they aren't due until some time in August, so I feel good about those...




I also did some work on one of the CCRR pieces - this is Marijke's piece, and it has already had several things done to it, so I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, I just knew that I didn't want to dye it, as it has subtle tie-dye patterns in it which would be lost over-dyed. Then it told me it wanted to be stamped, which I thought was sensible of it, so I've stamped with two different small stamps in purple and a kind of orangey gold colour, and in the centre a larger stamp which is very similar to one of the smaller ones (oh, and if you were wondering if you can stamp on top of a silk hankie, the answer is yes). I still have to iron the fabric to heat set the ink (it's fabric ink) but basically, it's done now, and I think it looks ok. whew.



And finally, I backed & edged the washer postcards - I did this while Olivia arranged the jewels on her card. This is my perfectionist (about this sort of thing) daughter - yes, I really did edge six postcards in the time it took her to arrange a small handful of jewels. OK, maybe only 5 1/2, but still. So they are all ready to post on Monday, except for one, where I don't have the address yet. And I started quilting and putting the finishing touches on these oriental lantern pcs for ArtWeMail's open swap in July. I did four of them, all fairly similar to this - took ages working out if I wanted to add anything - angelina, sheers, netting, and in the end, decided on some brads (star-shaped) in the solid colour bands. I think it works. Anyway, the decision is made now and I refuse to second guess myself over a bunch of postcards... :)