We have embroidered our linens, pillow cases, table cloths, clothing, etc. for decades.

Objective

Keep up with today's crafting trends and apply the simple skills of basic embroidery onto paper.

Suggested Use

• Create lovely cards without being surrounded by a lot of supplies.
• If scrapbooking is your passion, embroidered embellishments will add a touch of class and yesteryear to your pages.
  
  Basic Supplies
   
• Piercing pad.
• Pricking Tool
• Pattern.
• Small scissors
• Office tape
• Double faced tape

There is also a lovely collect of large brass stencils with multi-patterns on them for embossing combined with embroidery patterns. You use the stencils to pierce right through. You will see the embroidery thread guide lines on the surface of the stencils.

Technique

As a brief overview, you will photocopy the pattern from your book, lay the photocopy on top of the card and tape it in place with low tack tape. The dots indicate where to pierce and the pattern is numbered so you know the sequence to follow when you embroider. TIP: Place the piercing pad under your work and under the piercing pad, place a firm board like mat board to absorb the prick of the piercing needle so it does not mark your counter or table surface. Prick straight up and down through the pattern and the piercing pad. While there is a larger pricking tool available, we feel it is unnecessary. If you notice the pattern shows several threads going through the same hole, do not be concerned and do not worry about pricking a larger hole. As you work the threads through the hole it will be fine.

When the pattern has been fully pricked, it is removed and discarded. Using the appropriate number of threads indicated in the pattern, start from the back side of the card through to the front.  Tape the threads in place to the back of the card at the start and finish with office tape. Follow the pattern numerically as indicated.

The Deluxe Beginners Embroidery Kit is a complete starter kit and comes complete with everything you need to get started making cards or embellishments for your scrapbooking pages. The only items you need to have handy at home is a small pair of scissors to cut the threads and regular office tape to secure the threads in place when you start and finish on the back of the card, and double faced tape to secure the finished work in place or back it off.

Cardstock: You can work directly on the card itself and then cut cardstock to size and mount to the inside of the front of the card to cover the “workings”. Alternatively, you can work on cardstock cuts, colored, white or black, then cut them to size and mount on the face of your card.  Have a plan! Whatever you decide to do, you will need to back off your work to hide the workings. (Unless you are scrapbooking and your page will do that for you.)

If you decide to mount the design on cardstock and glue to the front of a card, you may want to give your project a finished look by either edging with one of the Krylon Metallic Leafing Pens or punching the corners with the clever southwest punch and running threads around the sides going behind the notched corners to hold the threads in place.