As part of National Craft Month, I decided to try a few new crafts and share my successes and failures throughout the month. For this first project, I did a simple, no-fail embroidery project. Embroidery is not entirely new to me, but I’ve never done it in quite this way before.
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Remember those sewing cards you had when you were a kid (if you were lucky)? The holes were nice and big, which made it easy to lace your shoestrings up and down and back and forth and feel like you were really sewing. They were great, but I always felt like something was missing. All you could do with them was to take out the lacing and start again. As an adult, I want something to show for all that work!
Lucky for me, Twenty Stitches has taken the sewing card concept to a whole new level, making embroidery-on-paper projects just right for the grown-up who wants to make and share useful craft projects. I ran across these kits when I was at Stitches West a few weeks ago and knew I had to try them. The product choices are adorable, the packaging irresistible, and the esthetic is clean and modern.
I chose the Embroidered Notecard Kit (C1), which contains perle cotton, archival paper with laser-cut holes, a needle, glue dots, note card backs, envelopes, and clear instructions for embroidering my own cards. In other words, absolutely everything I needed for the first embroidery project that I’ve done in many years.
All I had to do was thread the needle and follow the superduperly clear instructions, choosing my own color placements. It was fun and easy.
I was going along, feeling pleased with myself and happy that I was doing such a great job. It was looking just like it did in the pictures! I’m so smart! I can read instructions! I can embroider!
Pride goeth before a fall, so this happened: 
Look carefully, and you’ll see that when I stopped paying attention, I messed up. I had to carefully unstitch and re-stitch a couple of times. This happened more than once, each time when I stopped concentrating. (There’s a lesson here. I still haven’t learned it, apparently.)
I used five stitches in this project: Smyrna cross stitch (shown in red above), diagonal straight cross stitch, Rhodes stitch (the messed-up orange one), lazy daisy and French knots.
Although I didn’t time myself, I think it took just over an hour, from start to finish, to stitch all four cards. I didn’t need an embroidery hoop, or to buy lots of extra thread (there was more than plenty). I could easily tackle a larger fabric project after having worked these stitches as a kind of refresher course. This would be a good project for novice embroiderers, including middle-elementary grade kids and up.
And look! When I paid attention and didn’t mis-stitch, they turned out so cute! Since writing hand-written thank-you notes was one of my New Year’s resolutions, I’ll be putting these special cards to good use. Do something nice for me, and maybe you’ll get one.
So that’s it for my embroidery-on-paper project. Coming up next week: Shibori dyeing.
