Liz Nutter's made-with-love post cards are loaded with great ideas

Liz Nutter, one very modest woman, attributes her previous decade of quilting to a class she took at Quilt University when she was 60. In that decade Liz didn't let any grass grow under her feet. Just one of her endeavors is Art2Mail. She is one of the founding members of the original online group and has been making post cards for the group for five years. These are her first valentines. 

Liz has many successful and interesting ventures, the most recent a blog -- Seams a Bit Different -- made just so she could have a link for Subversive Stitchers. Her first blogpost is a must read! I look forward to future guest blogs from Liz. But for now -- here are her hearts! -- Dawn

The basic construction for all of my post cards is the same - a backing for address, 2-3 layers of fabric fused together for middle stiffening and a top. Where possible all decorative elements are fused in place then either zig-zagged or blind stitched around the edges. The charms were hand stitched securely for mailing.

The red and gold metallic background fabric is the same for these 3 cards, and I used left-over Christmas ribbon for the diagonal and vertical strips.

For the 3 hearts I cut one large, then simply cut out the inside for the medium and what was left became the small heart. I thought the heart charm gave it a nice little finishing touch.

For the second card {see photo), I pressed angelina onto a heart stamp then trimmed and stitched it in place.

This heart (third photo) was cut on the fold with both sides equal then one side trimmed and moved over a bit.


These next two cards (see photos) are made with one of my favorite techniques - snippets. ( Snippets are small pieces of thread or fabric cut even smaller with a rotary cutter.)

The white heart is made using snippets of Kreinik metallic threads plopped on a white background and covered with a piece of fine netting.


I cut a heart shape out of red cotton, centered the heart shaped cut-out over the snippets and blind stitched around the edges of the heart. The stitching on the vines and stem help hold it all in place. The vines are made using the longest straight stitch on my machine then using embroidery floss to whip stitch through the machine stitches.

Side note: If, like me, you could write a book called Machine stitching for the Clueless, you will draw your design on a piece of tissue paper, pin that to the background fabric and stitch over your drawing. Pull off the tissue paper. This does not work well with the zig-zag, so do the stems with a straight stitch, pull off the tissue, then zig-zag over the straight stitches. If you still don't get it right, call it 'esoteric contemporary' and keep on smiling.

Here are a few more examples of Valentines made for special people this year.

Granddaughter Elena, age 5, likes pink and purple. Enough said?? The inner rectangle has 2 layers of fuzzy yarn zig-zagged around the outer edge.

I went back to my grade school years for grandson Joshua, age 16 months. One large heart, and three little hearts become body, head and wings for a Love Bug. Commercial ribbon trim top and bottom.

I wanted something a bit more masculine for great-nephew Jacob, age 5, and decided stripes and his name would do the trick.