Today I am sharing a very recent card I made for my nan’s birthday. It’s a cat themed birthday card.
From Design to Stitch
I began by finding a picture online which matched the vision I had in my head. I found a photo of a real cat, sat in front of a cake.
I used this image to then sketch out my own version, as a simple outline drawing. I then digitised this using a drawing tablet on the computer.
Adding colour: stitch and pastels
I used grey for the outline of the cat. The cat I was basing the design on is a pale ginger tabby, and I felt that a black outline would be too harsh for her soft shade. I used black thread for the plate, hat and cake.
For the tabby markings, I switched to an orange thread and used a variable zigzag stitch setting for the most part, but switched to the narrow zigzag for the face.
I felt that the orange thread was a bit too bright compared to the cat I was thinking of, so I used fabric pastels to dull down the thread colour and to boost the colour of the background fabric. I also used the pastels to colour in the hat, cake, candlestick and plate.
On card and ready to go
I’ve become a huge fan of using spray mount these days as it seems to produce a much cleaner finish compared to double sided tape.
If I had more shades of orange, I probably would have used more stitching to create the fur colour, but I used what I had and I am pleased with the result.
Watch it on the Vlog
I made a time lapse of making this card and added a bit of commentary to it. You can watch it below:
