Simple Fabric Cards (from long ago)

I have discovered all sorts of things while working on moving back into the parts of our house that were under construction.  I have a big collection of baskets and some of them are usually on the top of the kitchen cabinets.  These were all moved for the floor refinishing in an attempt to avoid the dust of sanding.  It turns out some of them have been up there so long that I forgot what was in them!

When we lived in England, I was in a couple of women's clubs.  When we were there, the usual situation for ex-pats was that they were overseas for the job of one spouse and the other spouse was not given permission to work.  So, there were many formerly busy professional people who suddenly had lots of free time.  I enjoyed these clubs and all of the subgroups - including a few craft groups.

One group put on a small fair for handcrafts and a friend and I participated.  I need to look for the photos (pre-digital) of our displays - I remember we were quite proud of our booth!  I had totally forgotten that I made some cards for one of these fairs.  I found some lovely fabric at John Lewis (a large department store) that had small rectangles depicting each of the twelve days of Christmas.  The fabric had some metallic gold highlights.  I might still have a bit of it somewhere in the attic...but that's another project!

I decided to put "Wonder Under" (a type of fusible web) on the fabric and then I cut it up carefully to feature each of the days separately.  When I had all of my rectangles ready, I simply ironed them to plain white cards - easy peasy!  Fabric can be difficult to adhere with liquid adhesives which often leave marks but the fusible webbing ("Heat 'n Bond" is another brand) was great for adhering the fabric to cardstock.

I no longer have the complete series, I must have sold them unevenly or there may have been more of the panels for certain days in the section of fabric I used.  Looking at them now, I think about all of the pretty frames I could cut and add to the cards.

The other thing that was interesting about this fabric was the listing of the gifts.  I grew up learning this carol with the drummers on the twelfth day but in England, the common version has "nine drummers drumming" instead of "nine ladies dancing" (US), "ten pipers piping" instead of "ten lords-a-leaping" (US), "eleven ladies dancing" instead of "eleven pipers piping" (US), and "twelve lords-a-leaping" instead of "twelve drummers drumming" (US).  If you have the Cricut cartridge "Joys of the Season" you will see that the carol is written in the English version.  Fortunately, the numbers and words are separate so you can easily return the list to the order you are familiar with singing.

I also made some cards with pre-cut card blanks that had an opening in the front - some round and some rectangular.  For these I "fussy cut" a piece of fabric so a cute section would show in the opening.  For some of the cards I also added a bit of quilt batting to puff up the fabric.

 

It would be very easy to cut these type of card blank by creating a file for a three panel card with an opening in the middle panel (the third panel is adhered to the front to hold the insert in place.

You could also make these card blanks with thin dies like Spellbinders and they would give you the thin embossed line around the circle.

I used the same method to make this metallic tree card.  The fabric was from IKEA and I used the webbing to fuse the shapes to the card.  This was traced from an old cookie cutter and the ornaments were free cut with scissors.  At the time I made these cards I had no idea that there would eventually be electronic die-cutting machines...


I wonder if any of you actually made the apple pie from yesterday's post - I hope you enjoyed it.  We have lots more work to do to get resettled but things are starting to come together.  We might even get the furniture back into our room today - after many months of sleeping in the guest room!

If I have a chance, I'll try to finish up a few of the projects I want to share - I just need more hours in the day...

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