Machine embroidered card using magazine cuttings.

I have used a sewing machine to make cards in the past and loved the layered effect and the extra texture and detail it gives to a card. But I had forgotten just how much fun it is to stitch bits of paper and fabric and magazine cuttings onto a card... It feels a little bit wrong but very fun to use your machine to sew on paper! Now bare in mind before you start that sewing onto paper and card is probably going to blunt your machine needles, so get in an extra pack (they only cost about £1.90) that you can use for this purpose and remember to change the needle before you embark upon another project. The card I made today was a new house card but you really can use this technique to make any card, in and style, for any occasion.

To make this card I used

• One piece of White A4 card folded in half. 
• A few pages from this months Cath Kidston magazine... a great source as it has loads of glossy pages of beautiful patters and cute designs. These magazines are free and remember they often have seasonal articles which makes them great for making seasonal cards... iv got mothers day and easter sorted with one free magazine! 
• Several buttons
• Several machine threads in different colours. 

Sorry the Photo is sideways! 

Choose your design or a theme that matches the occasion. My mum has just moved to a beautiful big old country house with lots of land and the aim is to get some chickens... now handily enough there is a big 6 page article in the new Cath Kidston magazine about their new fabric design... chickens! Perfect. So my simple design was a few chickens, cut from the magazine, clucking around in the grass amid some pretty button flowers and with a big sunshine beaming overhead. simple and a little childish maybe, but this is what springs to mind when i think of spring time and chickens. So I lightly glued my cutouts in place to hold them steady, and then using the embroidery foot on my machine I used a freestyle stitch to sew around the out lie of my chickens, in different colours, using the stitches to highlight details like their wings and faces. 

I used the same technique to sew the rest of the card, including the stems and leaves for the flowers, the sunshine, the birds and stitched over the lettering to spell NEW HOME. I finished off the flowers with buttons which I hand sewed onto the card. 

I'm really sorry the photos are sideways... My mac is getting very very old and the newer programs will only seem to upload from the original... so even if I rotate the photo after i upload it blogger doesn't seem to like it! I promise I will take the photos with the camera the right way up in future. haha, good job my sewing machine isn't as technical as my computer!! xx