When your card goes in the post it will pass automatic sorting machines that have a series of guide rollers. It may be turned around sharp bends and squashed in the franking machine. Not to mention the rough time it may have in the mail sack.
If your delicate stitch work or bead work has only the paper envelope to protect it there is a good possibility that it may suffer.
Mary Corbet tells how she made a beaded flower card on her Needle ‘n Thread website. The design was from a Stitching Cards pattern and it looks stunning.
Mary made the card for her auntie’s 90th birthday. Mary says “I found that I liked poking the little holes in the paper… and so I ended up setting up about 15 cards”. She found that she could easily stack three pieces of card stock and prick them all at the same time.
You can see a beautiful interpretation of the Stitching Cards flowering vine pattern at Mary Grace McNamara’s website Hooked on Needles.
It was made as a bookmark for her Auntie’s 90th birthday. Mary embroidered it in DMC stranded embroidery floss on a mottled green card stock. After stitching she mounted the green card on larger piece of yellow card stock to hide the stitching on the back and to form an attractive border.
My Form-A-Lines forum has a number of enthusiastic greetings card stitchers among its members. I can recommend a visit to the new cards section of the gallery this week as it contains several beautiful stitching cards.
“Strawberry” by Eileen Scott is a gorgeous combination of stitching, decoupage and cutting.
If you are making a lot of cards with the prick and stitch method it is well worth getting one of the purpose made pricking mats that will be sold by your favourite craft store. Pricking mats are usually made from compressed fibre, felt or polyurethane foam. The size will be around 9 x 6 inches (22 x 16 centimetres) and ½ inch (1 centimetre) thick.
You want to try the prick and stitch technique but do not want to spend out on a purpose made pricking tool until you are sure you will enjoy this card making technique. The solution is to look for a sharp pointed object that you already own. Here are some suggestions:
This corner scroll pattern is easy to stitch directly on to a greetings card. The simple design is worked in stem stitch. The photograph below shows the scrolls on a hammered cream card stitched in green thread. I have added a photograph of an iris that I took in my garden. You could add a picture with decoupage, rubber stamping, teabag folding etc.
Corner scroll card with an iris picture.The corner scrolls could also be used on a square card by repositioning the pricking pattern…
A by-product of a prick and stitch design is the holes that the thread passes through. Some people regard them as an important part of the design that should show and others think that they are better minimised.
Two different names for a method of stitching that at first glance seems to do the same job. So what is the difference?
On backstitch more thread ends up hidden on the back of the work than on the front. Stem stitch is the opposite, more thread is visible on the front of the work than on the back. I often wonder why the opposite to backstitch was not called front stitch.
This post looks at a method of stitching that is often used to fill areas and shapes with colour. I call it the crossing fill stitch as that is what it does. I try to work this method of stitching into my pattern designs as it gives an attractive finish and is popular with stitching card makers.
The instructions for this stitch often read as follows: