How to Make a Handmade Fabric Embellished Greeting Cards

If you want to use all those bits of scrap fabric left over from larger sewing projects, try making fabric-embellished greeting cards. Handmade fabric-embellished greeting cards are easy to make and fun to customize. Use fabric embellishments to make cards for holiday greetings, birthdays and other special occasions. Your fabric-embellished greeting cards will stand out amongst the store-bought varieties.

Things You'll Need

• Paper
• Pencil
• Card stock
• Straight edge ruler
• Utility knife
• Scissors
• Chalk pencil
• Fabric scraps
• Double-stick tape
• Undecorated cards
• Sewing machine
• Leather sewing needle
• Cotton sewing thread
• Glue
• Binder clips

Instructions

1. Draft a greeting card design. Rather than blindly adding fabric embellishments to the front of a card, decide what kind of design you want. For example, you may want to make a birthday card with a layered cake embellishment. Create the cake from simplistic shapes such as rectangles and cylinders. Simple geometric shapes and primitive outlines of objects make the best fabric embellishments.

2. Determine how large to make your greeting card. You want to create a card that's large enough to easily fit your embellishments.

3. Cut a piece of light card stock to size for your finished card. Its height should equal the folded card's finished height and the length should equal 3 times the folded card's length. Use a utility knife and a straight edge ruler to make accurate measurements and cuts.

4. Divide the card stock into thirds across its width, lightly marking each third with a pencil. Use your straight edge ruler and the back side of your utility knife's blade to score the card at each mark.

5. Draw embellishment templates on a second piece of light card stock; make the templates appropriately sized for your card's finished dimensions. Cut the shapes from the card stock with a pair of sharp scissors.

6. Place the card stock shapes on fabric scraps, trace around them with a chalk pencil or dressmaker's marker, and cut the shapes from the fabric.

7. Arrange the fabric embellishments on the front of your card; secure them in place with double-stick tape.

8. Change your sewing machine needle to a leather needle and thread the machine with cotton sewing thread in a color that complements the fabric shapes.

9. Sew the fabric shapes to the front of the greeting card in the middle section. Leave a 1/4 inch seam.

10. Turn the card over so the front side faces down and apply a thin line of glue to the edges of card's left-side section. Fold the left section onto the middle section and secure it in place with binder clips until the glue has fully dried. This will hide the stitching.

Tips & Warnings

• If you want to prevent your fabric shapes from fraying at the edges, apply fray-check to the cut edges or reinforce the back of the fabric with a thin fusible interfacing.

• If your card design includes several layers of fabric shapes, arrange the first layer on the card and sew it in place before arranging the second layer and sewing it into place.

References

• Crafting a Green World: Tutorial: Make a Greeting card with Scrap Fabric Applique (and Buttons!)