We Love Quilting!

EASY VERSION.

Making a fabric postcard is very easy. You first need to decide what fabric you want for the front. In this tutorial I am going to show you the easiest possible way. The next posts will get more difficult. This is just the basic.

First of all I have a piece of clear template plastic 4 x 6 inches. I did not show it here but the reason I have this is I carry the template with me when I fabric shop. Sometimes you will see an awesome piece of fabric with a scene on it and want yards of it to make cards only to get home and when you start to cut you realize you can not get hardly any of the design within the 4 x 6 inch area.  If you have your clear piece of plastic with you then you can just take it lay it on the fabric and see if it is feasible to purchase for making cards. You can get approximately 60 cards out of 1 yard of fabric, or close to it if you do not fussy cut, just straight cut. I like to turn the template all different ways on the fabric to see just what all different designs I can get out of one scene.

Take your fabric and you can do one of two things. First of all if there is a special scene I want out of the fabric I  lay my template down over it and trace lightly around it and cut it out. This way I can take one piece of fabric and get numerous different designs out of the fabric. If you are a good cutter like my husband Gary then you can cut the fabric in 4 x 6 inch pieces in just a few seconds without drawing off  on the fabric with the template. I am not a good cutter so I like either to get him to cut for me or use the template.

Next I take a piece of Peltex that has been cut 4 x 6 inches. You can get this at Hobby Lobby, Walmart, Hancock’s, JoAnn’s and just about anywhere you can buy fabric.  Peltex has glue on both sides with one side covered with a piece of cellophane type plastic. I use the double sided fused. You want to iron your 4 x 6 inch piece of fabric to the Peltex on the side THAT DOES NOT have the cellophane on it.. That should be against the ironing board to prevent glue from sticking to the board.

 

 

Ok after you iron the front of the card to the side of the Peltex you are ready to put the back on.  We are doing the simple version so here we will not be doing any type of quilting or embellishing with the sewing machine. That will be later on in future post. This is just a real simple basic card.  Ok pull the plastic cellophane off the back of the Peltex.  I have backs for the cards cut out of different fabrics. You do not want to use the dark or to busy design fabric  because it will be difficult to read the address. Sometimes I turn the fabric over and use the faded look on the wrong side. Here I just used white on white. Place the piece of 4 x 6 inch fabric cut for the back on the peltex and iron down.

 

Now to the fun part. You basically have your card together. You do however want to do some type of stitching around the outer edge. I have some cards that I have received the makers of the cards bound them like they were mini quilts. I need to get Ildika Colley to tell how to do that. Hers are perfect. I have not mastered that yet. 

I sew around the edges of the cards. Sometimes I have just sewn a straight stitch about 1/4 away from the edge and used the pinking shears to go around the cards to add a decorative finish.  I also have taken my bobbins that were almost empty and put them in the machine and used it until they ran out. Sometimes I would have 7 or 8 different colors on the card and if you have one of those great machines with all kinds of stitches experiment. I sometimes do just an inch or so of one stitch, change it to another stitch and use it for an inch or so and then another stitch and so forth.  It makes a very interesting card and you can not go wrong. Here on this card I used on the top a spool of thread that was all different colors. On the bottom side I used white in my bobbin. I did not want color to show this time on the underside. You could actually just pinking shear around the card if you do not have a sewing machine or take a big needle with crochet thread and hand stitch around the card. There are numerous ways to do the binding or finishing.

 

  Trim all the loose strings .. Flip it over and you can stamp it with a postcard stamp if you have one or draw a line down the middle of the card . Use a very extra fine sharpie pen to write on it. Address it just like you do a regular postcard. Ildika emailed me and said which I did not know myself, that PIGMA pens are great for beginners to use. They do not bleed. I will be getting some of those myself. Thanks Ildika!

I insert mine in clear plastic and mail. I put the stamp on the outside of the clear plastic. However I plan to start this week taking the cards to the post office and putting the stamps directly on the cards and getting the clerk to hand cancel the stamps for me. Then seal up in the clear plastic envelope.

I will tell you, I found a regular envelope that a card from Hallmak came in. I liked the way it look and I took it apart. I now save all my Time magazine pages along with craft catalog pages. I take them and draw off the envelope of the the magazine pages. Tape it together, put the card inside, put a return address sticker and use a label to write on for the address. Put the stamp on it and send it off. It is very interesting and colorful. It is your choice.

  I hope you enjoy this tutorial. I tried to make it as easy as possible. I will in the very near future put more difficult examples of postcards. None is really difficult, there is just some instructions that you need to know to help you along.

If you can not find Peltex let me know. I can get it for you. I am going to be having it for sale in the near future on my website www.welovequilting.com. You will either be able to get a full bolt or precut in to the 4 x 6 inch pieces.   I am busy getting items ready to put on the site. Bear with me! Thank you and let me know if you can understand this tutorial and if there is anything you would like to know or I need to change.

Here on this blog you can read the regulations on how to mail these cards in the mail. Feel free to print it off and take it to the Post Office in case you have any problems.

I hope in the future when you learn how to do these cards you will consider joining our Trading Fabric Postcard Group. We have a great bunch of ladies and receive and send cards all over the world.