It’s March and I finally finished a quilt, but it’s probably not what you imagine when I say quilt. Thanks to a swap challenge my quilt guild is doing with the Albuquerque Modern Quilt Guild I got a kick in the pants to make a quilt and have a deadline to finish it by (I am finding having a deadline, for me, was key to actually following all the way through on a project).
The quilt in question is actually a quilted postcard so yes, my first finished quilt of the year measures 6 inches by 4 inches! I flippin’ LOVE mail and get so much joy out of sending mail so I couldn’t not sign up for this one. I don’t care that it’s a wee quilt, it counts as a finished quilt–I pieced the top, quilted the top layer to the batting, put some fusible interfacing between that layer and card stock, and zigzag stitched around the perimeter twice to get all the layers together. The quilting is a little wobbly and the perimeter zigzag stitching is uneven and sparse in spots (it’s charming that way) but even with those flaws I think it turned out pretty cute and I’m quite proud of the finished piece. It’s handmade! It’s fun! My guild provided a bunch of links to help with this make and the one I solely relied on was Sarah Ruiz’s quilted postcard tutorial which is available as a free PDF download. Her guide is great!
Since I’m mailing the postcard from Minnesota and postcards typically have some sort of indication that you’re receiving it from someone not where you are I wanted to put my state’s initials on there. To make the pieced letters I used the instructions found in All Well’s Patchwork Alphabet how-to guide zine. I also love that I’m mailing it to New Mexico–MN to NM!
This was my first time using interfacing in any sewing project and it was kind of a fail? I only bought it because the instructions recommended it to provide stiffness/stability to the postcard. I used Pellon 808 Craft-Fuse and got it to fuse to the card stock but not to the batting. I maybe didn’t have the interfacing facing the right way; it states to put the shiny side of the interfacing against the wrong side of the fabric, which I thought I did but maybe I actually did not. If you have any other ideas about what went wrong comment below or write me please.
I also only had instructions on how to use this interfacing in Spanish, which begs the question, ¿por qué? Porque the English instructions were a casualty when the interfacing was cut for me at the fabric shop, that’s all. I did use Google translate to make sure I was reading it correctly since we live in the future (my Spanish has gotten SO BAD but I give myself a solid B and a pat on the back for my translation efforts before I resorted to Google). After ironing and ironing I didn’t want to dink around with it any more. The fact that it fused to one layer was good enough for me. Maybe it’s supposed to only fuse to one side!
The entire postcard is made up of scrap cotton quilting fabric from my stash. I think I got the solids from my neighborhood Buy Nothing group and the others are mostly Ruby Star Society, all little scraps I pulled out of a pile on my desk; they’re all being used in another quilt I plan on writing more on soon! I used a 50wt Victorian Rose Aurifil cotton thread for the quilting and 50wt black Guttermann cotton thread for the piecing. The batting must’ve been a cotton but beyond that I’m not sure what brand I used. I didn’t quite intend for the postage stamps fabric and the happy artist fabric to be so teeny tiny. If I were piecing this again I’d make the spacing between the letters smaller so that the outside fabric would show more.
Oh, and I almost forgot–this was my first time using my new quilting walking foot! It was a good project to try it out on. I can’t believe I waited so long to get one. For years I (wrongly) assumed I couldn’t get one for my sweet 1960’s vintage Singer but one quick Google search revealed that I indeed could get a walking foot and it wasn’t expensive at all. It was a dream to use! Never again will I struggle to shove a quilt sandwich over my feed dogs! Here’s my walking foot. Now I’m wondering if I need to order some of the other fancy quilting feet.
We’ll see if this postcard makes it safely to Albuquerque. I decided to go to the post office to double check a postcard stamp was sufficient (it was) and mail it as-is. I didn’t get any pushback from the perfectly nice postal employee I interacted with, thankfully. Some in my guild have said some postal workers they encountered have been quite cantankerous or even downright mean about their quilted postcards saying that the machines wouldn’t be able to handle it (as an aside: does the post office turn people into misanthropes or are misanthropes naturally more attracted to the profession?). No matter what I for sure want to make more because having a quick, easy to finish project is very motivating. Anyone need some snail mail?
Ash
A Perfect Sandwich 