These quilted cards are pretty simple to make, and a good use of those scraps stashed away … when it comes to sending cards, they’re a highly individual and personal way to send a message to a beloved friend or relative that speaks of time and care and thought so much more than any shop-bought card.
Please note this tutorial is intended as a guide for personal and domestic use only. Do not use this technique for commercial purposes.
Before we start: you can be as precise as you like with this, but it’s probably not one for the obsessively neat. I make these without measuring, pinning, tacking, or anything else, on the assumption that they are supposed to be a little bit “shabby-chic” and “scrappy-handmade”, not highly-polished professional pieces. As such, there are no hard-and-fast rules, just a demonstration with a handful of explanatory notes and some ‘here are things I’ve found work well’ pointers along the way.
So, let’s get started.
You will need:
- either 2 blank A6 cards, OR a single strip of card 10cm x 45cm
- PVA glue
- a handful of small scraps of fabric, preferably medium-to-light weight
- a sewing machine (well, you could sew it by hand, but it’d be pretty tedious)
- about 15-30 minutes (depending on how much fabric you use & sewing you do)
Step 1: Prepare the card.
If you are using 2 blank A6 cards, glue one to the other so that you have a tri-fold effect. If you are using a single strip of card, fold it into three equal sections. You should end up with something that looks like this:
If you glued it, obviously you need to leave it to dry before you sew on it. Sewing machines *really* don’t like wet PVA.
Step 2: Choose your fabric
(Compulsively neat and tidy people might want to skip this image)
From your bag of scraps (or bags: I have at least five bags of scraps, all organised by colour 
) select some pieces of fabric. Essentially, what you’re after is two or three strips for background, and then a couple of smaller pieces with a nice detail on them for the foreground. These can be either co-ordinating or contrasting, perhaps a couple of co-ordinating pieces for background, then a contrast in the foreground? It’s totally up to you, and what attracts your eye!
I usually try to choose colours and motifs that the person for whom I am making the card identifies with – either it suits their home decor, or its colours they wear often, or colours I know they love.
As a general rule, I try to avoid very heavy fabrics like denims and suedes and upholstery fabrics, purely because they can snag up the card as you’re sewing. Very sheer fabrics bring their own problems and can slip and buckle and fray if you’re not careful whilst you’re sewing. If you want to use them, go ahead, but proceed with caution!
Step 3: Arrange your fabric pieces on the card
It’s fairly self-explanatory! Once you’ve selected your pieces of fabric, arrange them on the card in a loose way until you achieve a satisfactory balance between the different elements.
At this point, I will generally stop the process and IRON the selected pieces. This is not compulsory, but I do find it much easier to sew them onto the card when they have been ironed (remember – no pinning or basting!), and you do get a much better impression of what the final card might look like.
Another thing to bear in mind, is that you almost neve end up with exactly what you think you’re going to do with these cards: because it is a very organic and loose process, you will probably find that you end up adding the shapes in a different configfuration, and in different quantities, than in your initial planning layout. But it’s still worth doing ….
Step 4: The actual sewing.
Hooray! The fun bit!
Working from top to bottom, and (obviously) attaching the background first, take one piece of fabric at a time, and sew around the edges to fasten it to the card.
Remember, you are working on the MIDDLE section of your tri-folded piece of card.
Don’t get too hung up on your original plans – just go with the flow and add pieces until you are satisfied with the overall design. Once you have attached all your pieces of fabric, use the machine to do some freeform quilting to emphasize any attractive shapes or motifs that appear on the card.
A couple of technical notes:
- A heavy duty needle works best for this if you are using medium weight or heavier fabrics, even if you have some sheerer foreground elements
- Every stitch you make is a PERFORATION in the card, so too much sewing will weaken the card to the point it disintegrates and starts to hang up in your machine, so keep it simple & avoid too much crossing over
- Use a slightly longer-than-regular stitch to attach the fabric – too short a stitch will result in the card disintegrating
When you are done, hopefully you will be pleased with what you see!
Step 5: Finishing off
The not-so-fun part
First things first: tie off your ends, nice and neat and trim off the excess thread (I know you know to do this, but I’m being comprehensive)
Trim off any fabric that is overhanging the edges of the card
As you can see, the inside of the card isn’t terribly pretty, what with all that stitching. This is where your tri-fold comes into the equation … PVA the left-hand-side wing of the card (as you see it in this photo, so that the sewn piece becomes the front of the card and it opens the right way round). Check and check again you are PVA-ing the correct piece of card – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve glued the wrong bit down and ended up with an upside-down card. Lucky I don’t try to make any actual pictures 
Once you’ve glued, you need to leave it to dry. To ensure proper sticking, I recommend putting the card underneath a heavy object such as a BIG book or something of similar size/weight until the glue is dried. Make sure that any surface on which you put the card is clean and dry, and that there is no overflow of glue out of the edges. It would be a terrible shame to ruin all that hard work ….
Step 6: TA-DAAAAAA
All done, and now all you have to do is write the message of your choice to the lucky recipient and send your card on its way.
And once you’ve done one, you’ll want to do more, and more, and more.
Have fun! And, if you do give it a go, I’d love to see your pictures ….
I started with a sketch of what I wanted to do – a combination of square, wild goose and hexagon patches and drew it up properly measured out.
I had a lot of pieces of blue and complementary colours from a patchwork piece I did from children’s clothes a couple of years ago. (Yes, I am the most dreadful magpie when it comes to hoarding fabric). I cut out and pinned the measured paper pieces to the fabric. Each piece of paper was numbered and had an arrow to show right way up . . .
This was necessary because when I get to this stage – all the little pieces cut out – I would otherwise have no idea where they all went!!
