Fortunately, I don’t have to ruin all my pretty paper and force my recipients to coo over some kind of messily-glued monstrosity, not when there are so many ways to handmake greeting cards using my favorite craft that I’m actually really good at: sewing! Check out my list, below, of my favorite tutorials for hand-making greeting cards. These will all work with store-bought card blanks, but for bonus points, you can even DIY the cards from heavyweight cardstock, Bristol board, or watercolor paper. You’ll want to get our your fabrics scraps, your favorite embroidery floss, and sometimes even your sewing machine to make these lovely cards:
Quilted Greeting Cards
The quilt-as-you-go method makes creating these greeting card fronts quick and easy. Create something abstract, or go for a more recognizable image! Use the same technique to make postcards that you can toss in the mail as-is.
Easy Patchwork Cards
These patchwork greeting cards are even easier to sew than the quilt-as-you-go cards at the top of my list. For this version, don’t even worry about turning and pressing–just overlap the fabric pieces, right sides up, and stitch them down! Your recipient would have to work VERY hard to wear out their greeting card enough to get the fabric edges to fray.
Handmade Quilted Postcards
These are definitely more work than the previous quilting projects, but look how fancy they are! I love how the bias binding makes them look like real mini quilts. Although these are technically postcards, you could also pop these into an envelope to keep them nice while they travel through the mail. If you send them as postcards, though, just make sure you weigh them before you stick on that postcard stamp–the layers of fabric can quickly make these cards heavy enough to require additional postage.
Hand-Designed Quilted Card
If you’re super artistic, THIS is the project for you! Design your own embroidery pattern, machine-stitch it, hand-color it, and machine-quilt it. If you’ve got a free-motion foot for your sewing machine, you could also just start stitching from scratch and see what happens. Either way, you won’t find ANYTHING like this in a big-box store!
Stitched Birthday Candles
My favorite part of this birthday card is the way that you can personalize it for the recipient’s own age–until you run out of space for candles, I guess! If you’re also including a gift that you’ve sewn, it can be really cute to use that same fabric for these candles.
Selvedge Christmas Tree Cards
Who knew that selvedge could be so festive? Combine selvedge with other pretty fabric scraps to make these cute fabric Christmas trees, then applique them to cards. A couple of months later, change up your color scheme and your cutting shape and make Valentines!
Scrap Fabric Bunting
Not even your tiniest fabric scraps will go to waste when you make this project. And because it’s only a greeting card you don’t have to worry about the fabric fraying–just cut and sew and go! I think these would make cute invitations, especially because they require so little time to create.
Fabric Applique Greeting Cards
Fusible webbing is the secret ingredient to making all the little fabric details on these cards. Stitch them down for security, or just stitch to add pretty embellishments! This is a terrific kid-friendly project, or you could use fabric to recreate a piece of kid artwork.
Easy Fabric Cards
The perfect card doesn’t always have to be complicated! These fabric cards are simple and lovely, requiring just a showstopping fabric, some double-sided fusible webbing, and zigzag stitching around the edges.
Embroidered Cards
Who says you have to have fabric in order to sew? This tutorial shows you how to embroider directly onto cardstock, letting you stitch a greeting card without a stitch of fabric! Do YOU have a favorite sewn greeting card project? Tell us about it in the Comments!
