If you're looking for the original resolutions check-in blog post with the Rafflecopter giveaway and Linky party, click here.
...but life moves on...
Thanks so much, once again, to Sandi of Quilt Cabana Corner for hosting another seasonal postcard swap! This time around the theme was summer, and we were supposed to get them to our partners by June 21st, the first day of summer. Oops. Well, if I got my postcard *finished* on the first day of summer, that still counts, right? I got it in the mail on Monday, the 23rd, so I wasn't too far off. Sorry, partner!
My partner for this swap was @eileensideways (aka Sue). She sent me her postcard way in advance because she's in the midst of a move and was afraid she'd lose her supplies in boxes. Here's the card she sent me.
It definitely took me back to childhoods at our summer cottage on Lake Ontario. The bay our cottage was on was always filled with sailboats. We even had sailboats of our own periodically, although of the little "sunfish" variety, with all the requisite adventures and misadventures ensuing. This postcard breathes summer to me--thanks, Sue!
Great fabric choices, by the way--and I love the detail of the star on the sail. Altogether, a very fun postcard that I love having hanging on my wall!
For the postcard I was to make, I'd known immediately what design I was going to use as soon as I signed up for the swap. It just took me awhile to get around to doing it. Ain't that always the case?
If you've been following my blog for awhile, you might recall Chicken Butt. I ran a challenge about three years ago to do something based on children's artwork, using fabrics entirely from your stash. Chicken Butt is based on an art class project of my daughter's when she was in high school (original drawing pictured at left). Here's the blog with the backstory.
And here's the finished product. I just love this guy--he makes me grin every time I see him. Consequently, I've been wanting to do a series about the Adventures of Chicken Butt. And so, the summer postcard gave me the perfect opportunity.
Introducing: "Chicken Butt Takes a Dive."
It's all fusible applique, all with my own hand-dyes, except Chicken Butt himself, who was done with a tone-on-tone white I had in my scrap bin. I'd debated whether to do his feet and cockscomb as threadpainting, but ultimately ended up doing them as little-bitty-put-them-on-with-a-tweezer fused pieces because I didn't have a thread the right color. Really. Tweezers.
I made some quilting design choices based on Cindy Needham's Design It, Quilt It class on Craftsy (see my review here). I'd outline-stitched Chicken Butt and the clouds, but he still wasn't standing out enough. Recalling what Cindy Needham had said about "sunshine and shadows", I used her scribble stitch throughout the sky to really make everything else pop. It worked beautifully. Then my swirls in the waves didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped, so again recalling Needham's lessons ("If you have an awkward moment, fill it with a distraction") I went back in and just did a few more whonked swirls and, overall, it doesn't look half bad. I did a fused binding again, a la Laura Wasilowski's Hand-Stitched Collage Quilts class on Craftsy. I find fused bindings the easiest for me to do on postcards. easy, stable, and a whole lot faster than satin-stitching those edges.
And so, Summer Postcard Swap complete. Thanks, Sandi--and thanks, Sue!
My daughter got a kick out of seeing how her past art lives on. I may have to do a larger version of Chicken Butt Takes a Dive to hang on my wall next to the original Chicken Butt.
Which begs the question: How many more times can I manage to say Chicken Butt in one blog post? Chicken butt chicken butt chicken butt...