How to Embroider on Card Stock
Embroidery no longer means stitching exclusively on fabric. Card stock has become a popular material to embroider on, whether embroidering by hand or machine. Greeting cards and bookmarks are obvious projects, but embroidered card stock also makes colorful attachments for cards or scrapbook pages. It can be inserted into acrylic blanks such as travel mugs, coasters and trivets made especially for needlework. These are available at needlework and craft shops as well as online.
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Things You'll Need
- High-quality card stock
- Card stock greeting card blanks (optional)
- Painter's tape or masking tape
- Sharp tool for piercing
- Embroidery floss or perle cotton
- Hand embroidery needle
- Machine embroidery thread
- Machine embroidery needle, size 11 sharp
- Medium-weight cut-away stabilizer
- Temporary spray adhesive
- Decorative paper (optional)
Instructions
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Hand Embroidery
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Choose a pattern you want to stitch. This can be a vintage embroidery transfer, a coloring book picture, a simple line drawing from another source or a design you sketch yourself. Scan or photocopy the design for use on your project, reducing or enlarging if necessary.
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Select a piece of quality card stock for your project. If making a greeting card, use a pre-made card stock blank, or cut the card stock to size, but don't fold it until after you've perforated the design. Lay your pattern copy over the card stock and secure with painter's tape or masking tape. If you're making a card, be sure to lay the pattern over the front cover of the card.
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3
Fold a piece of felt or heavy wool, a towel or even a thick sock to use as a pad. Lay the card stock with the pattern right side up on the pad. Perforate the card stock by piercing through the lines of the design with something sharp. Use a pushpin, stylus or your embroidery needle; you can also buy a tool manufactured especially for piercing paper and card stock for embroidery. Space the holes evenly along the design lines, about 1/8 inch apart. When you've pierced all the lines of the design into the card stock, remove the pattern copy.
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Gather the colors of embroidery thread you want to use to stitch the pattern. If using floss, determine how many strands to use in your needle so you fill up the holes without adding too much bulk to the embroidery. Thread the needle with about 12 inches of thread, but don't knot it. After you insert the needle through the first hole of the design section you're going to embroider, catch a short tail of thread on the wrong side of the card stock and secure it with a small piece of regular tape.
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Embroider the design by taking the needle up and down through the holes in the card stock. Sew a back stitch to create a solid line. A running stitch creates a broken line. Use long and short straight stitches for details. To finish a color, make the final stitch through the card stock to the back, trim the thread to a short tail and tape it to the wrong side of the card stock.
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When you've completed the design, finish the back of the embroidery by gluing decorative paper over the knots and stitching. Backing paper isn't necessary if you plan to glue your embroidered piece as an attachment to a card or scrapbook page or insert it into an acrylic blank such as a coffee mug.
Machine Embroidery
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Choose a design that has been digitized especially for embroidering on card stock, or select a design with a lower stitch count and bigger stitches--the card stock could weaken and tear if there isn't enough space between stitches. Many embroiderers do stitch regular designs directly to card stock, but be aware of potential problems. Digitized designs for embroidering card stock are available from many online retailers of machine embroidery designs.
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Select a piece of quality card stock. Fold in half and trim to card size. If you prefer, use pre-made greeting card blanks, although the quality of the card stock may not be as high and, therefore, not as suitable for machine embroidery.
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Hoop a piece of medium-weight cut-away stabilizer. Spray with temporary adhesive. Press the card stock to the stabilizer. If making a greeting card, press what would be the inside front flap of the card to the stabilizer.
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Embroider the design onto the card stock. Use a sharp needle size 11 or smaller; do not use ballpoint or universal needles on card stock.
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Remove the stabilizer from the hoop once the design is complete. Carefully cut the stabilizer away from the stitching.
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Cover the back of the embroidery with decorative paper to finish. This last step isn't necessary if no one will see the back of the card stock--for instance, if you're making an insert for a coaster.
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Tips & Warnings
For machine embroidery especially, when making greeting cards it may be easier to embroider on a separate piece of card stock that you trim to size and glue to the card front.
You can embroider on card stock using a regular sewing machine, although you're limited to whatever decorative stitching your machine can make. Change the needle after completing your project; sewing card stock blunts the needle's point.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit nadel und garn image by Daniel Fuhr from Fotolia.com
