Postcard Swap Parade with Elm Street Quilts

Postcard Swap with Elm Street Quilts and a free Virtual Quilted Postcard for you!

What feels like a very loooooong time ago, Patty of Elm Street Quilts decided to organise something that I thought would be a very fun idea….. a postcard swap. A little voice said…. “You’re too busy. You have enough projects for now.” I said “Shush, party pooper voice” and signed up anyway!

Fast forward a couple of months and I have made and sent my postcard. I have received a postcard in the mail. And now it is time for the big reveal! 

I’m so glad I ignored the voice of reason and squeezed in this project. I was instructed to send a postcard to Lynette Caulkins from What a Hoot Quilts. I love Lynette’s blog, so I was delighted to be making a postcard for someone I “know”. Of course, I don’t really know her very much at all, but I feel like I do.

Quilt Lynette a Bird! 

To get started on the postcard swap, we all had to nominate a single word as inspiration for the person sending us a card. Lynette’s word for me was “Bird”.

Well, the obvious route to take with this was an owl for “What a Hoot” …..but I am not known for sticking with the obvious. I delved into Lynette’s blog further, remembering that taekwondo is a big part of her life and wondering where I could go with that. I knew she had attained her black belt last year (amazing) and I find that really inspiring. So, I really wanted to do something that celebrated Lynette’s taekwondo achievement.

Birds are into martial arts, right?

I found out that taekwondo has an emphasis on kick-type moves. So I started my design by drafting a generic bird doing a martial arts kick. Thank goodness for google images…

Then I discovered that Lynette wears a red dobok (uniform), so that solved the problem of colour. And then, somehow, the sound similarity of the syllables “taekwon ” to the word “toucan” stuck in my head, and an irresistible idea was born. The taekwondo bird just had to be a toucan-do bird!! In a red dobok!

Making my silly postcard swap idea a reality

The toucan is built from scraps  – the background batik is an offcut from my Valentine’s Hearts project.

I detailed the toucan eye on in wax crayon and fabric pen and made it permanent by ironing.

I layered the appliqué over a scrap of polyester batting and a layer of tear-away embroidery stabiliser. Once the postcard was appliquéd and quilted I didn’t tear away the stabiliser, I left it there.

To finish the postcard, I covered the back with two sheets of ordinary printer paper so that my post card was nice and stiff. I glued these on. Then I trimmed the card and finished the edge with two rounds of zigzag stitch.

I have to admit that my design didn’t shrink in the quilting like I thought it would. This is mostly because I found that the polyester batting wasn’t stable enough to cope with the appliqué process and I unexpectedly added the stabiliser. So  in the end I did trim my postcard to a bit larger than the stipulated 4 x 6″. I expect Lynette doesn’t mind and the postcard police won’t find me. 🙂

What arrived in my post box?

When I was signing up for the postcard swap, I wasn’t really sure what to put down as my “word”. In the end I decided to go with whatever came to me first, which was “Happy”. The result was that a couple of weeks ago I had a nice surprise in my letter box….

My purple postcard is from Joan H, and she has named it “Happy Scrappy”.

On the back it reads ” Greetings from New Jersey, USA. Hi Dione, I’m a beginning quilter! Hope you enjoy this “Happy Scrappy” postcard. I love purple.”

I love how Joan has put a bit of herself and her quilt journey so far into this postcard by using her scraps. Makes me want to see what her original quilts were! 🙂 As far as I’m aware Joan doesn’t have a blog or instagram account, so I can’t point you to anything. If I find out differently, I’ll let you know. Thanks Joan – I hope you got my email to tell you it arrived.

Would you like to see more postcards from the postcard swap at Elm Street Quilts?

There is a blog hop and a linky party parade! You can find out more by clicking on the world button at the end of this post after the US gets to April 7… Due to time zones there will be some staggered starts, so remember to check back if anyone’s post is not up yet. Everyone should be up by 7th April 6 am ET US. I missed out on officially being listed on the blog hop though a comedy of errors that got too hard to sort…. so, for full disclosure, this is me desperately trying to be part of the in-crowd!! haha…. 

But before you head off down the interesting rabbit hole that will be the postcard swap blog hop….. would you like a virtual quilted postcard to send to a friend or two who could do with a smile and a little encouragement?

I  especially liked the “Can Do” part of the Tou-can-do  word play, because I really respect Lynette’s motivation to live life to the full despite some significant chronic health struggles she faces. So I have doctored her postcard to make you a motivational virtual quilted postcard for your loved ones.

Now, go explore the postcard swap parade and blog hop! 

Do you think they noticed me blog-bombing their hop?! They are all nice girls, hopefully they will forgive me…… and a special thanks to Lynette and Sanda for helping me muscle in on the action. Perhaps that hop button should have looked  more like this…. 

Snigger.

Thanks for organising the postcard swap Patty! I loved it!

P.S. Sharing on Crazy Mom Quilts.

Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest or FB. All your follow options can be found here.