Getting Creative Making Cards

A couple of post ago I mentioned that I had my first ever table at my local produce market and this week I have been making some more things to sell. I noticed that the people who did extremely well at the market were the ones that had fruit and veg and eggs to sell. I'm guessing that this is because these items are needed on a daily basis so that come the weekend, people come back to the market to stock up. With this principle in mind, I decided that I would make some greetings cards. Cards are something people always need and many many years ago, I had a stall at Tavistock market selling my hand made 3D decoupage cards and I actually did quite well. 

This time, I wanted to do something a little different. I have long admired people who can do freehand machine embroidery and recently, using one of my book tokens that I got for Christmas, I bought myself a fabulous book by the very talented Poppy Treffry. Previous attempts at freehand machine embroidery were, shall we say, less than successful. Being used to the rigid feed of  normal machine sewing and the need to sew in a straight line when making cushions and things, I found it very hard to simply throw all that out of the window and move the embroidery hoop around willy nilly like a mad thing. The finished result of my first attempt looked like a drunken spider had skated all over it after having it's feet dipped in ink. Not a pretty sight and a world away from the fabulous designs Poppy seems to achieve so effortlessly. 

I am, though, nothing if not determined. Some might even say stubborn! I knew what I wanted the cards to look like but I also knew that I wasn't ready to take off the feed dogs on my sewing machine just yet ..... it's a bit like taking the stabilisers off your bike when you're a child...... very scary! So I compromised. I stitched the fabric to the cards using a basic bog standard machine sewing technique and ...... Ta da ..... cards :-)

I have to say I do like them quite a lot. 

Not bad for a first attempt.