Stitched Birthday Cards

Hi Everyone!

One of the classes I took while I was attending Boston State College was Arts and Crafts for Primary Grades. Professor Cody was the incredible teacher of this class. He made everyone feel good about their creative abililty and taught us a wide variety of techniques to use with young children. He gave us yarn needles, yarn, and pieces of burlap and taught us basic needlepoint stitches. We combined all of the stitches we were taught and stitched masterpieces on burlap.
When I became a first grade teacher in Lexington I taught those same stitches to my students and had them stitch on burlap as I had done in college. I brought my feather weight sewing machine to school and helped my students transform their burlap samplers into toss pillows for their mothers for Mother’s Day. The boys were as excited about their creations as the girls were and all of their mothers loved their gifts.

Years ago I stitched pictures for our home and for Robbie and Marie’s first Easter, Christmas, etc. but as time went on I didn’t give stitching much thought until I came across from stitching templates from Bazzill. The templates are made from plastic. You place a sheet of tag on a piercing mat and then place the template which has holes that outline a shape much like a dot to dot puzzle does on top of the tag. You poke a paper piercer (needle) through the hole in the template and through the piece of tag. Then you use embroidery floss to stitch through the holes you have created in your tag.

Last night I used some of my birthday templates to help me create some stitched birthday cards. This cupcake one is my favorite.

I ran some white tag through a Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder before I pierced the tag. I used a backstitch to stitch all of my creations. I used a dark brown marker to highlight some of the embossed dots.

This party hat was easy to stitch because I only used 2 colors of floss. The hat is navy blue and the pompom on the hat is green.

There were only 2 balloons on the template I used for this card, but I added a third so that the card would be more colorful.

This time I ran the paper though the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder after I had stitched the card. The stitches flattened as I ran the paper though the Cuttlebug. You’ve probably seen cards I’ve created that have clouds that I have pierced, but not stitched. This time I stitched the clouds and really like that look.

I am thinking that if you took any clip art or paper piecing image and placed it on a sheet of tag you could use it as a template. 

Have a great day!
Carol