Large cards for my Card Exchange partners for November - quilted background with photos

Wanting to strech my creative muscles I challenged myself to a new background technique for my November Card Exchange cards.  I found this one on Splitcoast Stampers and it is called  Disappearing Nine Patch. I increased the size of the squares to allow for my large card size.  I created 3 nine patches with coordinating scraps gluing the squares to scrap bond paper.  Once they were dry I trimmed them each into four new squares and arranged them to create my backgrounds.  I use regular tape on the back to hold them together and stamped them with a zig zag stamp with dark blue ink.  That was fun!!!  I added white borders on the top and bottom then realized that I had failed to trim my card to the proper size before creating my background which now left me with a background that was too tall.  Not wanting to undo too much I simply trimmed out a section in the middle and glued the two pieces together and added a green mesh ribbon across the joint before adding the background to my dark blue card.  I chose this photo of leaves trimmed from my sister's photo calendar for my focal element.  I added four rows of paper piercing to it, then layered it onto a green yellow cardstoc and then added an embellished font greeting to the bottom to finish off my card.  
 

I chose a yellow card base for this card and found that my background fit just nicely on it with only a slight bit of trimming to straighten my uneven edges.  Not sure I will be trying the quilting technique with fabric as I was not able to get my corners to match using paper.  I added a length of green mesh ribbon acorss the middle before adhering it to my card base.  I trimmed my photo from my sister's photo calendar page, added four rows of paper piercing with my pattern tracing wheel and then layered it with coordinating purple cardstock.  I adhered it to my card using 3D foam tape and then embellished a laser printed greeting (Desert Diva) with cardstock and paper piercing and added to my card.  It was fun to stamp the stitching on to my background.  These will be off to my partners in next week's mail.

Therese