Making the Valentines

      Every year, I make Christmas and Valentines cards. It is always a stretch to get them done, but I have been able to do it so far. There probably will be a time I will not be able to make so many. I kick myself because there are always people I could add to the list, but I just cannot add any more and be timely.
     This year, I decided to make the fronts in one large piece that I could longarm and save wear and tear on me. I started with a large piece of washed cotton sheeting. I laid it on a table covered with plastic drop cloth.
      First, on dry fabric, I used cookie cutters dipped in soy wax and stamped designs all across the fabric. Soy wax melts at a low temp. It comes in flakes and I put a metal bowl in an electric fry pan and the wax melts on low temp. I dipped the cookie cutters into the melted wax and stamped one at a time. Soy wax removes with hot water and blue Dawn.
     After that, I wet the whole piece and dropped on acrylic paints that were watered down to act like watercolors. I used a variety of reds, pinks, oranges and violet. When it dried, it was a bit pale for my taste, so I sprayed it with water and dropped the paint again. I think thickend dyes would have been more intense, but I never used them before. When dry, I scraped some metallic paint over it. When dry, I washed all the wax out with hot water and Dawn. I let it try and then used big chunky foam stamps (from when I was an art teacher) and sponged on acrylic paint, stamping all over the fabric.

     When totally dry, I drew in chalk a grid the size of the card fronts. I loaded it on the longarm using heavy white felt as the backing and batting. I later realized that Rosie the cat had ripped out part of the batting (she loves shredding battin) which  did not notice until I had longarmed over the area, so it was not as padded there. I used black thread and quilted over the grid lines so I could cut the pieces apart. I should have quilted more lines, because when I cut them apart, sometimes there was not enough stitching to hold the edges together and I had to re sew on my Singer 301 the edges of the heart piece, adding more time. I free handed the hearts on the longarm and echoed over them.
     As a result, no two cards are exactly the same, but have a lot of different character across the surface which is precisely how I like my quilts and why I love to use so many fabrics or scraps.

Finally, the card assembly

     I wish I had more in process photos. However, I was trying to handle a lot of materials, especially messy ones, and I had to concentrate every step to avoid disaster. This made it hard to add taking photos to the mix. For those who received the cards- remember I love you! I have a couple of cards left over if you just have to have one even after the day.