Happy Birthday K

I need to be committed. I spent yesterday (when I had 2 deadlines looming) making a birthday card for a little girl. Using a method I'd read about in Quilting Arts years ago. Here are 2 of the first cards that I made using this method; Here's a close-up.
I used silk flowers under a sheer rainbow colored fabric that I found at Wal-Mart. I stitched a magnet to the back so they could go on the fridge. They are postcard size but the beads made it impossible to mail without an envelope. I mailed them to family members that year, 2006.
Earlier this year a grandson asked for one 'like his Mother's' and I made this:Truth time: the flowers were already attached and most of the quilting done. I added the 7 and the beads and finished the back and it still took about 2 hours.
While digging I found this unsent card:(I wrote a thank-you note it and mailed it.)
So, I knew I needed to make a special card, but did not want to have beads be on it (the child is turning 3!). So I took the left over 4-patches...for this project (which is supposed to be done today)and sewed them together for the background, thinking fancy postcard.... realized that I had NO silk flowers, (one of the things I cleaned out about 8 months ago). Then sewed a few more 4-patches to it.... When my amateur #3 looked horrible I looked at my fabric stash and found one with rabbits on it. I added 3 rabbits to the front before the sheer fabric. If you look real hard you can see them. I used the rabbit fabric for the back and wrote Happy Birthday on it. Now I have one big birthday card; at least big enough to wrap around a beanie baby.
Things I did different on this card;

• used wonder under on the rabbits
• had bigger folds of fabric
• edged it with rick rack...which worked great (I did not want to bind.)
• top stitched at edge of border on top of everything to hold backing in place.
• pieced the background (I really like the pieced background.)

What I don't like:

• the jerky quilting
• the sticky batting (I could find a thin backing)
• the not enough contrast rabbits...or I could have put them on top.
• the corners of the rickrack...how DO you get around the corners easily?
• that now I 'get' to make 8 more birthday cards...well, I'll have to keep track; a 1 year old doesn't need a fancy card...but that means I'll have to keep track of which one got one and which one didn't...not sure I can do that. Since that 'card' took most of a whole day to make I'm not doing this every year.

This is as close to an 'art quilt' as I've gotten. I like the way it turned out although using my domestic sewing machine instead of the long arm was difficult. The batting kept sticking to the bed of the machine so the quilting is not as smooth as it was on my older pieces. The older pieces were also done on the DSM but I was used to using it for free motion and the bed of the machine was lower...it really does make a difference.

I found the article that inspired me in Quilting Arts Fall 2006 written by Peggy Holt of Montana