Post Card Trading

It's time to trade postcards with people from all over the U.S. and some abroad.  This happens about twice yearly.  Themes are always given and people sign up for a particular theme, make fabric postcards to fit that theme, and mail them off to the recipients.  This trade I signed up for 'Fruit' and 'Birds'.  The latter shouldn't surprise you.  I finished them today.  For the fruit theme I chose to use a pear and both a red and a black cherry.  Who knows why I chose such a combination.  They're made entirely from fabric scraps of which I still have plenty left.  For the bird theme I dug out my old college (so you know they're old) set of linoleum cutting tools and cut a pair of herons into a small block and then printed them onto a mottled green fabric to represent a marsh.  Always fun to make but even more fun to see what creations I'll get from others on these same themes.

Peekhole On A Winter World

The latest challenge for my on-line group, Fast Friday Fabric Challenge, was issued last Friday, the fourth Friday of the month and was to depict dimensionality in a quilt or Trompe l'oeil pronounced Tromp loy.  Most of this type of work is very realistic and I jumped at doing this. While looking over the links for this challenge I happened to remember a picture I had drawn several years ago and surprisingly was able to grave the correct sketch book even.  But I was even more surprised at just how many 'several years ago' was.  Seems I drew it in 1980!  Still worked...  So I took a photo of the pencil drawing and then printed it onto an 8" x 10" piece of fabric.  The 3 faces weren't as dramatic in black and white so I used colored pencils to give their skin and shirts some color.  I quilted the faces very little so as not to lose their power. Yes, all the pine needles are individually cut averaging about 1" x 1/16" in size.  Only took a few hours one evening.
 Then, since I love birds, I put a lovely little White-crowned Sparrow on a branch for the father and sons to look at.  The shadows are all thread painted.  It's 15 1/2" x 17".