Twilighty Fabric Postcards

Why don't you sit with me today? –Edward Cullen, Twilight, page 87

Yeah. I know . It is completely ridiculous to be so be so into a series of books about teenagers — teenage vampires, no less. But I am. If you haven't read the books, you can't judge. And if you have read them and don't like them, well, not everyone has good taste .

In an effort to feed my obsession shortly after first reading the books, I searched the internet for anything Twilight related. Eventually, I found TwilightMOMS^TM, where I met lots of other Twilight obsessed people. Those of us who liked to sew and/or quilt kind of banded together and formed a little group. We are each working on our own individual Twilight themed quilts and we've made a few quilts together as a group; we sent one to Stephenie Meyer and the other two were auctioned and all the proceeds were donated to charity. We live scattered across the States and we even have a member in Australia. We've been quilting together, coordinating our efforts via e-mail and private messages, for almost two years now. We've become quite good friends. We do a gift exchange at least once a year, we commemorate our anniversary with a little swap, and those who want to send each of the others a little something for their birthdays {tradition is a card and a fat quarter}. And we very often trade in Twilighty fabrics and merchandise.

Last fall, I decided to make Twilighty fabric postcards to send out with my birthday fat quarters. I used this tutorial, with a few minor alterations. I finished my outer edges differently {she did a satin stitch, I used pinking shears}. And I used Pellon Peltex 72F II double-sided fusible stablizer instead of the non-fusible Peltex to save on Heat 'n Bond to fuse the front and back to the Peltex. I still used Heat 'n Bond to fuse the additional fabric elements on top. For the pictures, I used fusible ink-jet fabric sheets.

I had all the supplies necessary on-hand. I bought I don't know how many yards of the double-sided fusible Peltex {with a 50% off coupon, I'm sure} probably a year-and-a-half ago, planning to make birthday fabric postcards to send to family and friends in 2010. I never got around to and I still have a ton of it left. It is all cut and ready to be made into more postcards. Maybe 2012 will be my year.

I started working on these last fall. I was going to make them a few at a time, as the birthdays came up. But life got on the way and the three I started with for October birthdays got set aside. Then two more birthdays happened and I decided that I'd better just finish them all in one go and get the late ones out to the birthdays that had already passed and then be prepared for the birthdays still to come. And while I was at it, I made a few extras.

These are for the girls who are Team Jacob. I used these as an opportunity to to a little free-motion quilting practice. I did pebbles across the brown strip. The first one wasn't much fun, but I'd gotten into a groove by the second one. My original plan was to quilt in a birthday wish using the character's font from the book, but after spending well over an hour on the first one, I changed my mind. This cute little paw print fabric I used for the background came from Angie.

These are for the girls who are Team Switzerland. Again, I did a little FMQ practice — horizontal straight lines on the background, a few flourishes at the corners of the pictures and some elongated loops across the burgundy strip. Sorry about the fuzzy picture.

And these are the Team Edward postcards. I found this fabulous batik with the apples on sale on-line, six or eight months ago and bought a yard, wondering what fabulous project I could make with it. LOVE it for these postcards! The red Moda Marbles came from Wanda. I quilted swirly scrolls along the red accent strip and did flourishes or frames around the picture.

More postcards for Team Edward. I did the same quilting on these; swirly scrolls on the accent strip and frames around the pictures.

Our group is predominantly Team Edward. Iris sent me that gorgeous gold fabric I used for the accent strips. Nothing too original with the quilting on these — elongated loops across the gold strips and flourishes on the pictures. I also did vertical straight-line quilting on the backgrounds for these.

I did stippling on the red background and just a straight stitch across the black accent strip. That fabric is some of the tiny bit I have left from the quilt we made for Stephenie Meyer. I love the swirls in it.

I love this picture of Bella and Edward. I kind of went with what I knew for the quilting and did elongated loops across the burgundy accent strip and flourishes on the pictures.

And this is my absolute favorite — Edward in the meadow. Wanda found the background fabric and sent a little bit to everyone in our group who wanted some. It goes perfectly with this picture. I did little flowers across the accent strips and flourishes at the corners of the pictures.

And there you have it. Fifteen Twilighty fabric post cards. Am I going to count this as fifteen finishes? You bet your sweet Aunt Fanny I am! It is nice to start the year off with a bang, especially since most of what I've been working on are things I started a while ago. Hooray for clearing out projects half-done!

Today's post brought to you by: