I made this quilt (23 inch - square) a few years ago. I had found this amazing collection of 'cigarette card' fortune cards on ebay and wanted to showcase them in an unusual way. I also had a turn-of-the-century French series of postcards, showing a young girl dressed up as a fortune teller. The postcards were 'photo transferred' onto a piece of organza that I tea-dyed. Then I photo transferred the playing cards, in numerical order, onto strips of muslin, with 'words of fortune' that I printed on the computer. Lastly I screen printed 'fortune' symbols onto another piece of cotton (seen in the middle) and pieced them all together, finishing with tiny gold beads in the center and buttons on the corners.
As fate would have it, when I was assembling the 'fortune cards' in lines, one card (on the lower right hand corner) became tilted when ironing. I remember being so angry in the moment, and having to walk away from the project entirely. When I came back to it the next morning, I looked at it with new eyes, and found that I loved the 'mistake'! Then I looked up the meaning of the misplaced card (#16-star) and found: "Guarantees success in all your undertakings...". Fate was in my hands without my even knowing it!
