Fabric Postcards

I’m yearning to work in a small format. I have a stack of 5″ x 7″ and 16″ x 16″ fabrics sitting on my cutting board and I’ll be turning those into postcards and 12-inch-square quilts over the next 7 – 10 days. While I’ve been pondering these stacks and the possibilities, my mind has wandered back to a project I did in 2009 for a trade with Postmark’d Art, the fabric postcard trading group that I moderate.  It was one of the first projects that I completed using my then-new felting machine.

Using the felting machine to complete one 4″ x 6″ fabric postcard would be most difficult. For this project I thought of a larger image that I could then cut into many postcards. I called it my “Van Gogh Project” and it was very fun to use fabric in an impressionistic way.

I layered small fabric chunks on top of white felt then placed a layer of tulle over the whole surface, pinned it here and there and took it to the felting machine. In the center-most section of the piece I tucked in a tulle that had flecks of white sparkle — voila, some real sizzle for the center of the sun. Click on an image for a larger view.

 

 

Hover your cursor over the image for more details. (And if you see the fern quilt as a header at the top, or no header at all, click on the title of this posting for a header which will reveal a closer view of the center portion.) The project is complete here — already cut into 4″ x 6″ pieces, edges stitched and sealed with gold paint, yielding 21 fabric postcards. Each postcard was numbered —  1/21, 2/21, etc. I traded many and sold many of them (I mount them on 8-ply museum-quality rag mat) and I have just one left, the very center. It’s actually the one I like the most so I’ve been happy to have it hang out with me in my studio. It will be mounted and ready to sell during my solo show, “Borrowed From Nature,” in October.

 

 

If it sells I’ll be a bit sad. Then I’ll just have to get busy with the felting machine.