Mothers Day - Sewn Elements

I have been lucky enough to buy a new sewing machine which now takes pride of place in my craft room and whilst I am not the worlds best at sewing it is one of my aims to start learning in 2015! I have noticed that some of my favourite cards are those that include some sewing theme and or embellishments so after unpacking the new sewing machine and arguing with the instruction manual for an hour I decided to come up with a sew inspired card for mothers day. Sewing is just one other way of making your hand made cards stand out.

Using some hi quality linen card I went through some of my off cuts of paper and chose to include a stripe of red on the right hand side of the card. I inherited some sewing inspired stamps and unfortunately I don't have the name or brand of the pack but I chose a heart and sewing line stamp and using red ink stamped a line next to the red band.

I jotted out on some paper a bold M-U-M and then cut round the letters so that they could be used as a template. I was kindly given some old Laura Ashley prints and offcuts so I used these for my letters. I just traced round the paper templates on to the back of the fabric and cut round each letter. Just a note here - this works when spelling out MUM because the letters look the same when reversed but trace on the front if you are using different letters such as E S N etc as these will turn out back to front if you trace on the wrong side of the fabric.

I first sewed the centre letter as this gave me an idea of where the other two letters would be placed. This is really important because if you get this wonky just slightly your home made card will look quite unbalanced once finished. I had a funky zig zag stitch for the 'U' and then placed the M's and used a straight line stitch. I think having more than two types of stitching may look a bit messy on the M's but if you have a variety of colours of thread you could add interest by changing the colours instead of the stitch.

Once the letters were sewn I found a stamp for a button and chose some more off cuts of papers that would go with the fabric. A simple stamp and cut around and then all I did was stick the buttons to the card with foam pads.
Using foam pads gave the finish a bit more interest.

Once I had placed the buttons I just used some Liquid Pearls to add an accent to the hearts and using a pen I just added some sewing lines along the red card.

I will definitely be doing some more sewn accent cards as I love the effect and it really was quite a simple card to make once I got round to using the sewing machine!

The sewing accents have given me some ideas for New Baby home made cards and with several of my friends expecting new arrivals this year I will probably be making quite a few......watch this space!