a good swap

The neat card she made me. Love the sprigged paper along the edges.

I ran into Jan somewhere - a swap, a forum. Now I feel like a dolt cause I can't remember, but anyway we decided to swap prayer flags. Actually, it was prolly via Lenna's flag swap.

We both like old lace and vintage stuff, so here's what went back and forth across the ocean. (she's in England)

The beautiful flag she sent.
It's so much cooler in person cause the fabric flower
is totally squished by the scanner.
The old rayon seam binding is great. Love it all. 

It's so rewarding to have a swap go well. My package took forever to get there and I was just about to start working on another flag for her when she let me know it finally arrived. Good thing - I was about to go down and picket the P.O.!

Thanks, Jan!

She included a bunch of neat Christmas ephemera.
I used the kid on the sled on my December
calendar page here.

The flag I sent her. Lots of vintage lace and bits of
an ancient shawl.

A little cluster of clippings on the back.
The green backing is an old piece of silk, lovely stuff.

Lenna's prayer flag swap

Lenna has got a prayer flag swap going and I think there are a few spots left. Altho I'm not a religious person, once I read up on prayer flags, I liked the concept well enough to join. Pretty much the only requirements were a final size of 5" wide x 8" tall with a sleeve at the top for hanging.

I started out with a couple old damask napkins from my stash, no telling when I bought them but for sure they're from a thrift store. I cut them into the proper sizes, then did some stamping on a few of them with an old Tibetan wood block I got from a weird little junk store when I first moved to CA. It didn't print real well, so I lost my oomph for the project and they sat on my work table for a couple weeks.

Then I decided to dye the fabric with various spray inks and distress stains. That was a lot of fun and I got happy with them again. Did some more stamping with a dot-textured roller from my husband's Garage of Gadgets and made some big arcs with the cardboard inner roll from a large roll of packing tape.

Found a scrap of upholstery fabric sample from years ago when my friend Moneka gave me literally boxes of sample books that an upholstery store had put in a dumpster near her house. I've gotten a lot of mileage from those samples. Stamped "confidence" on it in turquoise ink, then cut it into strips. I went thru my drawers of lace and pulled out bits and pieces of trims I'd dyed over the years.

When Julie was here last weekend we went to the Lace Museum in Sunnyvale where they had a 'fill a bag with scraps for free' thing going. Among the things I got was a large piece of quite damaged pale yellow cut-work that was perfect, so I cut a piece for each flag. Stitched everything onto the flag with various aqua and blue plain old floss, then added some beads to hold the lace on. Folded the top over to make a sleeve with a running stitch.

The three shown here are for the swap. My two mail art buds are also in the swap so we're each making two more to swap among ourselves. We'll end up with 5 flags which is a nice number to hang in the back yard or craft room. The ones I made for them are a bit different - don't want to give it away before we swap them in Sept.

A simple enjoyable project made completely from things I had on hand. Doesn't get much better than that. Soon they'll be dispersing confidence vibes into the air. Lenna's swaps get people from all over the world, so no telling where they'll end up.