Card Stitching

Hello! I created this card for my husband who celebrated his birthday last Friday.

I started off by finding a design that will fit the total area of the die cut holes on a cardstock. The design is from the book 100 Cross Stitch Card Designs by Joanne Sanderson. I edited the stitched design, removing the wine bottle and adding the greeting.

One of the difficulties in converting a stitched design on cloth to a stitched design on paper is the paper has bigger holes. A design might be small if stitched on cloth but when stitched on paper, the size becomes bigger. Another difficulty in stitching on paper is that there is no quarter stitch on paper. Either you leave the square blank or just put a cross stitch to that square. This also applies when doing a half running stitch. What I did is do a straight stitch from point A to point B, bypassing the holes in between these two points. This is better explained by looking at the orange star.

The die I used to create the stitching holes is Crafty Meraki Stitch-A-Cross Slimline die. I die cut an 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" heavy weight white cardstock. I die cut one side of the panel first. To die cut the rest of the panel, I matched the holes on the cardstock with the raised holes of the die. I taped the die and the paper together to prevent shifting while I run this through the machine. Although despite this, I still had some shifting which created non-circular holes and unequal hole spacing. Running the shims back and forth might have made my shim shift. I went ahead and use this die cut panel. After the stitching has been done, the imperfect holes are less noticeable since the stitched design becomes the center of attention. Also, don't forget to use a metal shim when using this die. 

Removing the tiny die cut circles created by the die can be a challenge. I used the Waffle Flower A2 Piercing Panel die to help in this process. I rubbed the raised side of the die to the back side of the die cut panel to remove the die cut circles. Do this over a trash can for some clutter control. For the circles that did not fall off using this technique, I used a Spellbinders Tool n' One to brush off the circles and poke the circles out.

After I got done with the stitching, I adhered a white cardstock to the back side of the panel. 

To accommodate the large design, I created an A8 card with the size of 7.875" x 5.25". I used a heavy weight Neenah Desert Storm cardstock for the card base which I cut at 7.9" (I just eyeballed this, cutting it a hairline off the 8" mark). I scored this at 5.25" on the long side.

I adhered the stitched panel to the front of the card, cutting off any excess. I added a woodgrain washi tape around the edges to frame the design. 

I also want to show another stitching project I created a while back. My 9 year old son requested me to stitch our last name so he can put it up on our wall. For this project, I am using The Stamp Market Stitched Alphabet Die to die cut the holes for each letter in our surname. Good thing, we have a short last name =). Instead of doing a cross stitch, I did a running stitch, using a different color for each letter. I used a black metallic floss for the outline.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Have a blessed, brilliant and creative day!

Maria Giselle B.

I am sharing this card at

AAA Birthday Card Challenges #221