Cardmaking, Die Cutting, EBE by Brandi Kincaid, Essentials By Ellen, Stamping

Quilt Inspired Appliqué, Pieced and Stitched Card Designs with Essential Hexagons

Have you tried stitching on your cards, yet? We’re *sew* excited to have Design Ambassador Emily Mydlowski with us today sharing two quilt-inspired cards using the Hexagon Essential Shape and Stitching Dies and the Pieced Together Stamp Set.

Hi Friends! I’m sew happy to be here with you today sharing two projects inspired by my favorite clean and simple quilt designs…the classic red & white quilt. Red against a crisp white background makes such a statement both stitched on fabric and paper. The color combination is bright and cheerful but also has a warmth that extends into the holidays.

When I’m making cards, I’m always looking for that extra touch that let’s the recipient know it was handmade with joy and love. By adding stitching to your projects, it gives that little extra handmade goodness to your card designs and the Essential Stitching Dies takes out all the paper piercing guess work.

Just like starting a quilting project, I prepped all my pieces before stitching and piecing (adhering) everything together. I LOVE how the A2 Piecing Plate 2 not only creates a great stitching canvas it also adds fabric-like texture to your paper. I used the pierced background on white cardstock to cut out the hexagons shapes and frames.

To give the look of appliqué on paper, I heat embossed the Pieced Together images using VersaMark Ink and White Detail Embossing Powder and then die cut the images using the Essential Hexagon Design Dies and added the stitching holes using the Essential Hexagon for Stitching Dies. I wasn’t sure which appliqué I wanted to use, so I went ahead and stamped and heat embossed all the images using my MISTI.

Quick Tip: While stamping/embossing multiple images to one sheet of cardstock will save you time—-pressing your embossed images with your cutting plates several times through your die cutting machine can flatten your images. To prevent this from happening, I first trimmed all the appliqué images into square panels and then cut the hexagons one size at a time through my die cutting machine.

Let’s Stitch & Piece these cards together shall we:

For the first card, I used three strands of white floss to add a running stitching around the appliqué hexagon. I like to use a running stitch to keep the backside of the stitching as flat as possible. I used a larger Hexagon Stitching Die to add stitching holes directly to the white card panel which I then stitched with red floss.

Then I stacked and layered the red and white hexagon shapes and frames to form the quilted pattern. I stamped the coordinating sentiment from the Stitched Together Stamp Set with VersaFine Clair Nocturne Ink and attached the stitched panel to a red cardstock base. As a finishing touch, I added a pearl embellishment to the center of the embossed appliqué pattern.

For my second card, I kept it simple with a “baste-like” stitch around the appliqué hexagon. Then I pieced together the Hexagon die cuts and frames using foam tape and liquid adhesive. To finish the quilted card, I stamped the Stitched Together sentiment in VersaFine Clair Nocturne Ink and attached the decorated panel to a red cardstock base.

So there we are friends, two red and white quilted card designs using the Pieced Together images and Hexagon Essential Dies. I hope you enjoyed my post today and it inspired you to add a few handmade stitches to your next handmade card.