Making ATCs (Artist Trading Cards)

Did I tell you about meeting a woman on an airplane who later sent me some upholstery fabric samples?  It all started while I was “arting” on a cross-country flight.  I was sketching and playing with paints and she was knitting.  Of course, it didn’t take long before we were talking about our respective projects, and it turned out that she was a quilter.  We exchanged contact info and it wasn’t long before a NICE selection of sheer upholstery samples showed up at my door.  How thoughtful!

I love sheers with textures.  Since I had recently agreed to make an artist trading card, I thought some of these delicate fabrics would be just perfect.  (Then I found out I needed to make TWELVE of them!  Oh well, at least I had the fabric I needed.)

Not familiar with artist trading cards?  They’re small cards about the size of a credit card:  2 1/2 x 3 1/2.  As the name implies, artists make them and trade them.

I decided on silk burgundy and cotton cream fabrics to showcase these sheers.

The gridded sheer fabrics made excellent backgrounds against the deep burgundy colors.

For each one, I layered a textured sheer piece that covered most of the card.  Next I added a small piece of cream fabric.  Then, I cut a motif from the sheer fabric and added it on top.  These were accented with a little bit of black  fabric.  Finally, I stitched around the motifs with black thread.  I did it in a kind of messy/sketchy style.

This one was my favorite, and I sent it to my new airplane friend.  (It was number 13.)

Here’s another one close up.

I added silk on the back, too.  Since it ravels badly I burned the edges with a soldering iron.  That took a while.

Here’s the whole collection.  I was pretty happy with them and they were (mostly) fun to make.

I swapped these for a very intriguing collection.  I’ll show you those in the next post.

Have you ever made ATCs?  Which one is your favorite above?

Ellen Lindner
P.S.  See my soldering/melting set up here.