Fabric Post Card Exchange - Sew Much Fun!

    Today - my first fabric postcard:

    How this all started - Some of my quilting friends had shown me postcards they received from other quilters as part of a post card exchange. I was really envious - of all the wonderful cards they received as well as the fun and challenge of making postcards to send. So when the opportunity came up at our guild mini retreat in September I signed up. There were 3 possible groups based on themes - flowers, Kansas, and holidays. I joined the Kansas group. There are 6 of us in total and the guidelines are to send 2 postcards - 1 before Christmas and 1 in March to each of the other 5 people in the group. This seemed do-able to me.
    I received my first postcard from Carol just before Thanksgiving. Love it! 

   Receiving that first card from Carol spurred me on to start working on my first postcard. After watching a show featuring Karen Eckmeier on The Quilt Show, I decided to do a layered landscape and what says landscape more than the flint hills of Kansas! 
Since it is Fall now I wanted to do it in browns and tans and of course batiks would make the perfect landscape. After I cut and layered the fabric, I used a manila folder with a 4x6 inch window to do a preview of my landscape.

   Next it was time for appliqueing and thread painting. I put some round squiggles on the nearest mountain, some vertical but messy lines for tall grass in the foreground and some wisps in the blue for clouds. 
   Then the card was ready to assemble. I used computer transfer fabric for the back of my postcard and included a clue that this was the Flint Hills. I then used steam-a-seam to fuse the back and front to super stiff interfacing.
 And finally a decorative stitch around the edge to finish it off. I am really pleased with my first postcard.
    I put them out for the mail yesterday and I can't wait to see new postcards from my quilting friends in my mailbox.
   Come see the Flint Hills - any time of year they are beautiful!
Denise