More Embroidered Cards

It's not often that a technique grabs me like this one has! I am loving these Embroidery Cards and even more so after my friend Susan Nel showed me that I was wasting cotton and there should only be tiny stitches at the back! At least the front always looked stunning and once the card was assembled, the back couldn't be seen anyway! But I believe I am now sewing them correctly.


This circular card above is definitely one with easy stitches - the inner 'fans', you literally go in and out of the 'centre' hole and into each of the other holes in turn. The outer scallop has a definitive pattern where you apply the formula of 1-9. Now I'm not about to teach you how to do this - I'll leave you to the experts, but once you're hooked, you're hooked!!!
The bird in the middle was cut out from wrapping paper!

It's not often that a 'newbie' like me discovers an error in a pattern, but the one set of 'fans' shouldn't have been there...I got this pattern out of the "Borduren als vanouds 3" booklet on page 14. On the template in the book, you have the 'fans' around the centre and at the top left there's an additional fan turned the other way, but not repeated in the rest of the pattern! Well I had already pricked that before I realised the error & had to go and work it in to make the whole thing symmetrical. Oh well, it worked out well & if I hadn't told you, you wouldn't have known!
I thought this purple flower fitted in well with the colour cottons I had chosen.


This card looks difficult, but really isn't...so long as you prick the holes carefully it will look good. As I look closely at the photo I can see where my pricking wasn't as accurate as it should've been, but when you view the card as a whole, it's not noticeable.


The picture in the centre of the yellow card is one I've had lying around for ages...it's a miniature shaker card with yellow sand in it. The combo of colours goes well with the multicoloured cotton I chose.


This birdie card is so soft...I love the way the pictures I find just happen to match so well and then I add background layering to enhance the colours further.


I must mention that I stitch the cards first, then find a pic to go in the centre - maybe others do it the other way round, but my way is far more challenging!


This is the first A6 card I tried & I love it!


I decided to do something totally different here - I first punched the Martha Stewart border around a 5" x 5" yellow cardstock then did the pattern pricking and stitching, which incorporated beads and sequins. This pattern was found on page 16 of Lenteborduren, a Dutch book written by Betty de Groote-Greven.