Quilted Christmas Cards

Christmas?  But, it is only October...

In 2008, I got the bright idea to make quilted Christmas post cards (I'll look for the book that I got my inspiration from and post the information for it in my next entry).  Those cards rode around in the backseat of my jeep for several months.  They never did make it to the post office.

In 2009, however, I got an earlier start.  I turned the post cards into quilted Christmas cards by attaching them to cards that I could actually write on.  In 2009, the cards actually made it to the post office. The picture to the right shows some of the left over cards from last year.

I love making the cards.  And, not just for Christmas.  I look at fabric differently when I'm thinking about cards: the focal images are usually easy to spot, the right background fabric is often the more difficult fabric to spot.  But, I digress.

Yes, it is October, but with about 60 cards to make, I needed to get started so that I repeat 2009 and not 2008.  So, yesterday and tonight I've assembled about 15 cards.  Assembly consists of taking focal fabrics (like the Christmas ornaments or penguins in the first photo) that I've already applied Steam-a-Seam2 to and fussy cut around, choosing a background fabric, and making "the sandwich."  The sandwich is the backing, the batting, and the background fabric.  While I enjoy using up the leftover batting from larger quilt projects, this time, I'm using a double sided fusible interfacing.  I picked up multiple packages of the stuff yesterday while it was on a "Buy One Get One" sale at JoAnn's.  With this many cards to do in a relatively short time, it definitely already saved time.  Also to save time, I pre-cut 24 backs (out of white muslin) and 24 middles (normally, the batting, but this time the interfacing).

Tonight, I finished zigzagging around the outside of each of the first 15 cards, and now I get to do the detail stitching.  More postings to follow on this topic, I'm sure.