One of our friends at church was sworn in as a U.S. citizen this week. I had a little bit of a plan in my head of a small quilted wallhanging I would make him to celebrate the occasion, and on Friday, while on the Shirley DeMott Memorial Annual Shop-Hop* with a friend, I picked up some appropriately patriotic-themed fabrics.
When my husband and I were out for dinner that night, I mentioned and briefly described what I thought I might make for our friend. My husband said, "Why don't you make another postcard? I like your postcards."
Well, okay then. As I like to give positive reinforcement for any positive reinforcement my husband gives me for my rather expensive creative endeavors, a postcard it is, tee hee. "Plus," I thought, "a postcard is smaller and may go a little quicker than what I'd planned anyway."
Yeah, well, that never quite works out, does it? I decided to do a design that was quite time-consuming. (Yep, all those red and white stripes are separate little strips of fabric.) Still n' all, it was done in a couple of hours. And of course, I didn't end up using any of the fabrics I'd bought on Friday and just dove into my stash instead.
Sadly, on the very, very last swipe with the iron to make sure all was happily fused down, my iron decided to spit. I hate my iron. And one of the fabrics bled. I hate that fabric.
Here's some irony for you--with all the work I've been doing with my hand-dyes and nothing ever bleeding, this was a commercial fabric. Go figure. My fault--usually when I'm fusing I use a different iron that's never had water in it. But I recently handed that iron over to my son, and didn't bother to take the time to empty the water out of my regular iron before starting to fuse. I hate that water.
I took this picture after I'd gone after the bleed with a dab of Synthrapol, followed by a second attempt with a dampened color catcher. So believe it or not, it does actually look a little better than it did. I'm going to wait to see how it dries, then probably do the ol' paint touch-up. Surely I've got white fabric paint somewhere. I really hate to see all that time--cutting narrow little strips, satin-stitching the hey out of everything--go to waste. But I also hate giving something to someone that's clearly in error. And I don't have time for a Plan B, other than buying him a card at Hallmark. Last I checked, they didn't sell "Happy Citizenship!" cards.
Now, that being said--here's the good news: I've got this whole postcard thing down! I like doing little mini art-quilts. They're fun! (This one is 5x7", btw, rather than the 4x6" I've been doing, as I'm not mailing it so I decided I could go a little larger.)
LATER ADDENDUM:
A little white Tsukeniko ink, judiciously applied. One would never know there was a problem.
*Mom and I used to often go on a shop-hop in an Amish area about an hour away on a Friday in December. I'd take a vacation day, and we'd visit three or four shops, then have lunch at an Amish restaurant that had the best dang corn chowder. After Mom passed away, various of my friends have been happy to keep up the tradition with me, and so the Shirley DeMott Memorial Annual Shop-Hop was born. Sadly, the Amish restaurant closed a couple of years ago, but I think this time around we may finally have found a good little pub to replace it. Not Amish, and no corn chowder, but great burgers!