A sewing machine pattern has been added to the Stitching Cards collection. The design features a treadle driven sewing machine. Sewing machine: www.stitchingcards.com/product.php/950/ The sewing machine design comes with a numbered diagram, a colour illustration, a pricking pattern and step-by-step instructions for the stitching. It is delivered by download to your computer. Pattern size 152 … Read more
The Beer Glasses design from the Stitching Cards web site is proving very popular so I thought it would be a bit of fun to find a drinking song to go with it. You could add the words on an insert to your card.
The song “Beer, Beer, Beer” originated as a sea shanty on Royal Navy sailing ships. The sailors settled in various countries and versions of the song are sung in Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Handmade Christmas cards can be traced back to fifteenth century Germany where cards with religious pictures were exchanged as seasonal gifts. The custom of sending Christmas cards by post started in Victorian England with the advent of the penny post.
Some time ago I added an awareness ribbon to the free sample cards on my Stitching Cards web site at the request of one of my customers. When I was designing the pattern I researched the background to these ribbons and found the history fascinating.
I have been designing stitching cards for over ten years but the origins of the craft go back a long way in history. Card has probably been used as a base material for embroidery since card itself was first produced. In the 1800s sheets of perforated paper became available to needle crafters. This started the Victorian craze for stitching mottoes and sayings on card. Designs were usually worked in long parallel stitches to form areas of colour.
Today’s card embroidery designs are typically worked in long crossing stitches that form geometric shapes. In the early 1990s Dutch designer Erica Fortgens started writing books with instructions and patterns for making stitching cards using geometric shapes.
In the forward to her book “Embroidery on Paper” Erica Fortgens tells how she got started.