Make your own appliquéd greeting cards

Thread Painting was the subject we recently had at our MQG sewing day and I had so much fun, that I thought I should share it with you.
We had several books for inspiration. One of them displayed the idea of using the appliquéd motifs for a greeting card and I was hooked.

The process is easy: You trace a simple motif onto the rough side of Wonder Under or any similar fusible web. Cut it out roughly, iron the sticky side onto the wrong side of a cute print and cut the shape out exactly. Next you iron the fused shape onto a background fabric, mine was a blank white.

Once you are happy with how it looks you stitch around with a black thread. Don't panic - it's easier as you might think. Drop down the feed dogs on your machine and use a free motion foot. If you like you can use an embroidery stabilizer for the background fabric. I went without one, because I didn't bring one to our meeting.
With the black thread stitch around the shapes, this doesn't have to be too accurate, it's part of the style to look a bit random, and it looks even better if you do the round for a second time.

Since I decided to use them for greeting cards, I ironed my little embellished fabric squares onto freezer paper, then cut them out to the desired size. This helped me to get the fabric flat and stiff like paper.

Once they had the correct size, I glued them onto a card with a matching color (the freezer paper still on). I secured them by stitching all around with a ZigZag stitch, thread color matching.

For my cupcake card I even added a piece of paper saying "Happy Birthday". The colors of the envelopes pair well with the cards.

I had fun, you got that!

And I thought you might like to give this a try too.

Now, I can't copy the motifs I used from our inspiration books - buuuut: I can create some motifs especially for you!

So I have a download for you: 

I made 4 motifs for greeting cards and also a printable sheet to add some text to the cards. You can mix and match how you'd like. The cards show only sample fabrics, of course you choose your own favorites.

Aaaand I couldn't stop: I made 4 more motifs for the kitchen: You can use them to enhance your kitchen towels, your potholders, placemats or baby bibs.

Now have fun yourself thread painting!

Click the picture below or just go here to get your 8 thread painting templates.