MILLYPENNY

My brother & sister-in-law are expecting a baby the 1st week in May so I decided yesterday that I'd get started on making a baby quilt. It's a bit bright but luckily babies like bright colours! I've got most of the blocks made at this stage, so a few more evenings & the quilt top should be done..

I'm in the middle of completing a few fabric postcards - have to finish off the edges in a few instances. This finished postcard is made from fabric scraps bonded to Fast2fuse and then machine quilted. The gold square was cut out from some papery type material I got in a craft shop; got a pack of various coloured sheets for about €3 which was pretty good value!

I just finished making this quilt "Sea Journey" on Friday night. It was a bit of a rush job to get the binding and sleeve on as I had to drop it in Limerick to be collected for a quilt show taking place at the end of the month. The quilt was based on a photo I took of a boat in Douranenz, Brittany last May. I enlarged a drawing of the scene and made a stencil of it using freezer paper. It was then painted using blue fabric paint. The 3 blue squares on the right-hand side were then machine quilted with a scene of the boat.

These two fish related ATC's were the first ATC's I ever made (back in November '08) These 3 ATC's were made in a series. It is made out of stitched pastel coloured fabric strips with extra embellishments (wool, felt and organza) added using an embellisher machine. This ATC was the first one that I received in a swap. It was made by Anita Mahon who is also in the Mid-West Patchwork Branch. Anita used real bog cotton trapped under a piece of organza in her piece.

At the Frieda Oxenham workshop which I went to in November, we were told how to make fabric paper which she uses in some of her ATC's. Fabric paper is made by liberally coating cotton fabric (cheap calico is fine) with PVA glue (diluted 1:1 with water), then add tissue paper or napkins (only use the 1st layer), more PVA glue and paint if required. It's a bit of a messy process, and it needs to be done on plastic sheeting. After making the paper it is then left to dry overnight. When it's dried out, put the fabric paper in between two sheets of parchment or greaseproof paper and iron it. This flattens out the paper and gets rid of the creases. The fabric paper below was made from 3 different types of Christmas napkins - 1 with poinsettas, another with the Christmas tree and the script one was used for the background. Some of this paper and other "fabric paper" ones were used to make Christmas Tree ATC's. The advantage of using this "paper" is that it ...

Back in November, I attended an "Artist Trading Cards" Workshop with Frieda Oxenham. I really enjoyed the workshop and every since then have been making a few ATC's in between other projects. The photo below shows the ATC's that I made during the workshop.