Hopefully this week will go better than last week!

I've been pretty good lately about using sewing to relieve stress. Usually it creates stress. Just plugging away at it is what has helped the most. On monday we had Roto rooter come out to fix my bathroom drain and the rooter roto'd right through the pipe and we had black sewage water cascade from the 2nd floor all the way down to the basement, with lovely waterfall all over the kitchen stove and the cupboards with food in them. 80 yo cast-iron pipes aren't what they used to be! Of course my anxiety-filled self thought this was very traumatic and it took a couple days for me to feel 'normal' again. (What is normal, anyhow?)

I mailed my bark cards, and also made a 2nd bark piece that I made into a wallhanging. Although the bark piece looks good, I put a back on it and discovered that heat 'n bond LITE is worthless. I'm very pleased with how it looks and I'm going to bring it to MCQ tonight.

I took a picture of all 6 cards together. Mine is the lower left corner.

Upper left corner is Marianne Bishops of Quincy MA. She used several techniques which resulted in a card that looks and feels like real bark. She's 'the one' who has never met me but sent me over 1,500 perfectly cut 1-1/4" squares of different fabric for my Almond Joy quilt!

Upper middle "Quaking Aspen" Franki Kohler of Oakland CA is white felt and dryer lint!

Upper right corner is from Bonnie Sabel of Vancouver WA. She used a few techniques that include cheesecloth, elmers glue and freshly ground coffee grounds!

Lower left corner is mine, my technique is posted at instructables.com

Lower middle is from Karen Musgrave of Naperville IL and she used raw edge applique.

Lower right corner is from Catherine Sorenson of Guttenberg IA, she used a brown fabric for the background that she painted and then felted wool felted on top with machine quilting.

I am so pleased with this trade. I had an idea how I was going to make mine with a certain product that I bought years ago, but after procrastinating for months because I couldn't find the stuff I had to figure out something else. I am very happy that it went that way because I love the bark cards I made. They were really fun. So fun I made two and kept one for the wallhanging. It is 15" wide and 17" long.

Now if I could figure out how to frame those 6 postcards together, I'd like to do that.

Back in January I put together these old blue and white blocks that a Boise Quilt Group had done for me years ago. They didn't fit together and none of the lines are straight. I had a tough time trying straighten them out when I was pin-basting it and then gave up. I'm machine quilting on it for a little practice. Along the while of doing that I'm discovering how badly my machine's tension is off and I'm trying to tweak it along the way.

I put my bark postcards on instructables.com!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Fiber_postcards_Tree_Bark/

I'd write something smart here, but I'm too tired and want to go to bed!

Postmark'd Art Elements Exchange: Bark

In Postmark'd Art our Elements postcard exchange is probably all done except for me...late as usual.

We're all suppose to make a 12 x 12" block of "Bark" and then cut it into 6 postcards, mailing 5 and keeping one for ourself.

So far I've made my original block, which is more like 15x15" (I didn't know how much shrinkage I'd get with stitching so I started out bigger and ended up with hardly any shrinkage due to stitchage.

The first picture is a closeup, before I used stiffener on it so it would be soft tree bark. The flash lightened it up too much.

The second picture is after I put stiffener on it, realized it was too sticky to work with and still have texture. I got really frustrated so I rinsed the stiffener out and just let it dry. The coloring in this picture is more the true color.

Today I'm going to try to figure out what I want to do next...maybe wet it again and throw it in the dryer for more fuzzy effect, try some stiffener again or just cut it into postcards right now, take care of the edges and get them mailed off and be done with it.

Only the shadow knows....cuz I certainly don't! :-D

Does it look like tree bark?