Confession: I have a fabric scrap collection that would make Bonnie Hunter swoon. You’ll find scraps stuffed into various-sized baggies all over my sewing room—and tucked away in closets and, okay, in the attic and possibly under my bed. I just can’t bear to throw usable scraps away, and while I swear that I’ll put them to use one day, I almost never do.
But a recent conversation with Patty Wheeler has given me hope. I first met Patty when I wrote a profile of her for Quiltfolk, Issue 34: Arkansas. While our original interview centered on sewing workshops that her guild (the Hot Springs Village Quilt Guild) does with a local Boys & Girls Club, our subsequent conversation was inspired by Patty’s fabulous quilted postcards. If you, like me, live in scrap fabric purgatory, these postcards might just be your ticket out.
The good news is, not only do quilted postcards make use of leftover scraps, they’re pretty simple to construct. “If I’m sick of a big project, then I can just sit down and make a couple cards just for fun,” Patty told me during our recent conversation. “Or if I only have a short period of time and don’t want to drag a bunch of stuff out, then I’ll make cards for a while.” Patty estimates that each card takes her about an hour to complete.
For years, Patty was part of an online Yahoo group called Postcard Pizazz, where members from all over the world sent and received quilted postcards; her album from that era contains 170 such missives. These days, she focuses on making quilted postcards for friends and family. She sends postcards to the kids in her Sunday School classes at church and is quick to post a quilted postcard thank you note.
Over time, Patty has become a proselytizer for quilted postcards. She does demos for interested groups and guilds, and has even written a handy guide with detailed instructions. She calls her postcards “tiny, mailable treasures” and insists that, in these days of texts and emails, getting something via snail mail is a treat—especially when it’s a handcrafted card.
If you’re the frugal type, you might like the fact that making a quilted postcard is actually cheaper than buying a card, and the recipient is a lot more likely to hold onto it. As Patty put it, “If I drive to the grocery store to buy a Hallmark card to send somebody for their birthday, I spend $6.99, and they’re going to throw it away.” Not to mention the fact that she could make a card in the time it takes her to drive to the store and get back home.
So what does it take to make a quilted postcard? Not a whole lot. You need fabric scraps, of course, and a batting layer, which can be actual batting or else a fusible interfacing material such as Pellon Peltex 71. The backing can consist of any light-colored fabric or a piece of cardstock. Patty notes that the USPS regulations require the back to say “Postcard.” You can write this out by hand, use a rubber stamp, or print a postcard back on a fabric sheet designed for an inkjet printer.
If you want to keep things simple, all you have to do is piece together your scraps into a 6” by 4” rectangle and sew it onto your batting layer. Trim and attach to your backing, and finish the edges. Back in the day, Patty bound her cards using satin-stitching instead of fabric, which created a lovely look but was a tedious process—not to mention the fact that she was wearing out her feed dogs! So she switched to using a 1.25 or a 1.5-inch binding strip, which is attached to just the front and batting layers and then pressed to the back. Then, the back is fused on, and she “stitches in the ditch” around the binding. Once she started doing this, she has never looked back.
Of course, you don’t have to keep your quilted postcard simple if you don’t want to. You can add embellishments such as beads, buttons, and charms. Keep in mind that embellished cards need to be mailed in envelopes. Patty uses clear plastic envelopes, which protect her cards while allowing them to be visible. If you want to keep your card out of the P.O. machinery, you’ll need to buy a “non-machinable” stamp, which costs a little extra but is worth the protection it gives your card.
If your inner artist needs to be let out from time to time, the quilted postcard provides a great canvas.
Grab your die cutters and go to town, or show off your appliqué skills. You can use quilted postcards to work out design ideas, experiment with color schemes, or just give yourself over to creative play. Sure, you might end up with some small UFOs from time to time (just ask Patty), but more often than not, you’ll create tiny treasures that your friends and family will be thrilled to find in their mailboxes.
Frances O’Roark Dowell writes about quilts for magazines such as Quiltfolk, Quilting Arts, QuiltCon Magazine, and Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting. She also writes quilt fiction (Birds in the Air, Margaret Goes Modern and Other Stories, and Friendship Album, 1933) and is the host of the Quilt Fiction Podcast. An award-winning children’s book author, Frances has published more than 25 books for kids, including the Edgar Award-winning Dovey Coe, The Secret Language of Girls trilogy, the Phineas MacGuire series, Shooting the Moon, and Hazard. For more about Frances, visit francesdowell.com.
