Quilted Greeting Cards with Machine Embroidery - Part II

These greeting cards are very easy to put together and a pleasure to receive. In this tutorial we show how to make greeting cards using cutwork designs from our catalog.

We used the Rose Lace, Cross Lace and Lady Spring Lace designs.

Step One: The pieces of either linen or cotton fabric for embroidery should be about 8" x 9" in order to be hooped. You'll trim the excess fabric later. Embroider the design in the center of the fabric. Cut away the fabric within the design. Press the embroidery.

Step Two: Now make a sandwich - place a layer of tulle (it will serve as backing in this case), cover it with a piece of low-loft polyester batting (we used very thin PolyDream), cover with a piece of cotton in a bright but matching color, and place your embroidered top over it.

Step Three: Quilt your cards. You do not need to pin the layers because the cards are so small that you can easily handle them. We chose variegated rayon threads for quilting our cards. Press with steam. Trim and square your quilts.

Step Four: Out of heavy-weight paper cut rectangles measuring double the size of your quilted tops. Fold them in half. Using a glue stick, glue the quilts onto one part of the paper cards.

Step Five: To finish the raw edges, we used a ready single fold bias tape. Machine-stitch the tape to the paper backing, so that it folds onto the face of your card. Then fold the bias tape onto the face of the quilt and hand-stitch in place.

Step Six: To cover the raw edge near the fold, glue a satin ribbon over it, both on the outside and on the inside of the card.