Postcard Stitchery & Mousing Pursuits

 

As I haven't fixed the photo problem

yet,

and I don't like to post without a photo,

I found this one

sitting in a draft post.

Not sure when it's from

but I think I must have made it for a postcard swop.

It probably dates back at least a couple of years.

We've had a mouse in the house.

It's evaded capture until today,

or last night to be more precise.

We've tried to capture it humanely,

but the traps were proving useless.

This morning however,

I found a mouse,

dead,

on one of the dog's beds.

We think Danny caught it.

He's always looking for mice in the long grass when we're out for walks.

One day he was walking alongside me,

on the lead,

when his attention was caught by something,

and in one swift movement

his head turned down into the grass

and when he turned back round,

he had a mouse in his mouth.

Dead.

He didn't even break step.

His nickname is

Mouser.

Well one of his nicknames.

Let's hope

last night's mouse

was the only one.



Inspired Words~Friendship

I am covering a number of things in this post.

First of all

I have joined Yiota, in Greece

in choosing some inspiring words,

for

'Inspiring Words Week'.

Secondly I have finished my third postcard

for

Leah's Postcard Challenge.

Kelly is from the United States.

The theme for March is

'Words to live by'.

My word for today is

Friendship.

You can see it on my postcard,

along with;

love,

health,

faith,

wisdom.

I added in large appliqued letters

Family.

I hand quilted;

create,

learn,

cherish.

To me,

all words to live by.

I thought it would be an easy postcard to do.

I had a clear idea in my mind

as to how it should look.

But I was not pleased with how it turned out.

So I started again

with the postcard that you see here.

It is okay,

but not really how I envisioned it.

However, I will leave it at that,

for now.

I practiced my machine quilting again,

but I'm not sure you can see the little quilted hearts.

So, friendship!

A parcel arrived for me yesterday,

all the way from Australia.

All the way from Robyn at Daisy Quilts,

Robyn who is the chief administrator

for the Hexagon Quilt Along blog I belong to.

To celebrate the first anniversary of the Quilt Along blog

Robyn organised a giveaway,

which I won!

And this is what I won!

A lovely book

containing plenty of inspiration

for some new projects.

Which I will no doubt share with you,

once I have made some of them! 

Then there's this little felt brooch

sent to me by Alison from England,

along with some other goodies

some time ago now,

and I don't think I mentioned it at the time.

I wear it on my woolly hat all the time at the moment.

Then we have two of our boys.

Rufus and Arthur.

Brothers.

They've been apart for the last couple of years,

but they seem to remember each other

now that they are back together.

Brotherly friendship!

So many ways to experience friendship.

And I love the way that the internet

shares friendship

around the globe.

Postcard Challenge

In my last post I said I would show you what I'd been up to with my 20 minutes a day

and my free day.

Following on from making artist trading cards

I took up Leah's challenge of making a postcard a month.

Leah was also in the ATC swap that I took part in.

For January she challenged us to make a postcard

using a bird and yellow.

So this is what I came up with.

The bird is quite small

and attached to the background using free machining.

The background is machine embroidered.

Because the leaves are so small,

I attached them by hand.

I'm a bit late with January's postcard.

I think I was too busy with my hexagon quilt to get my machine out.

The theme for February was

'things we love'.

I was going to do something to do with chocolate

but decided against it.

Instead I chose

flowers,

bright colours, though I've only used red,

butterflies,

stripes,

stitching,

stars and hearts.

I suppose you could say the butterfly and red spotted fabric are vintage.

I've had them that long.

That must make me vintage as well!

I had fun making them.

Although the photos don't show it

I have finished off the edges of the postcards

but then left a border.

I thought I would frame them and use them for pictures for our walls.

After all we didn't bring any of our art work with us when we left Sweden.

It's still in storage there.

I really enjoy making something like this.

It does take me a while to think up the design,

and it doesn't help that I have a limited choice of fabrics here.

My main stash is also in Sweden.

The postcard size is only four by six inches,

so they make quite small pictures.

The postcard with the bird is nice close up with the detail,

but the bird is too small to be seen across a room.

The second postcard would have benefitted from being quilted.

It would have added more 'substance' to the overall look of it.

It's nearly March

and the theme is 'words to live by'.

I've already got my ideas for the next postcard in my head.

I'll show you how I get on with it

when I've made it!

In the meantime,

pop on over to Leah's to see who else has joined the challenge,

and how they have interpreted the themes.