Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY


Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

Winter holidays are approaching! Here's an idea of a simple and quick DIY that allows using hand embroidery on a postcard :)


About 7 years ago I wanted to try scrapbooking. During that time I was searching for “my” hobby or craft, anything that will make me passionate. I really loved scrapbooking works I saw online and wanted to try something myself so I bought quite an amount of stationery: stickers, colorful paper, washi tape, cotton ribbons, and basic postcards intended for decoration.

However, my interest died down rather quickly and I switched to another new “passion” (was it decoupage? Soap making? Ah, I tried quite a lot of hobbies before stopping at embroidery). That meant that a lot of stuff I bought was sadly not needed anymore.

Speaking of which, it's the reason why I don't recommend beginners to buy a lot of materials and instruments when they start learning hand embroidery. Try it with what you have at hand and don't invest too much until you are sure that it's the area you want to improve and progress at.

Anyway, I actually saved some items for “future needs” including the postcards! And finally, their time has come, haha.

Today I offer you a tutorial on making postcards with hand embroidery :)

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

Naturally, this can be applied to any occasion, not only winter holidays. You can stitch pretty much any motif and then assemble a cute greeting card which would definitely make someone dear to you happy!

But since we are in a specific timeframe now, I decided to prepare New Year's motifs for you! You can download them for free if you click on the link below:


Now let's see how to make embroidery postcards.

Materials and instruments:

  • Basic postcards
  • Stitched motifs
  • Interlining (optional)
  • Glue stick
  • Gel pens, markers and other stuff for decoration
  • Scissors for fabric and paper

The list is pretty simple, isnt' it?

Hand embroidery postcards DIY


Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

1. First of all, stitch the motifs on the fabric of your choice. Cotton, linen, calico are the most common choices. I used the same thread for all the stitching, but surely, you can work these motifs in different thread and colors and you can also use metallics, like Diamant. I actually added a bit of whipping with metallic in one of the motifs :)

Place the designs carefully on the fabric: not too close but also not too far to not waste the fabric.

In my case, I wasn't sure at first about the size of the cut-outs I wanted so I placed them with the A6 size in mind and I think I could place them even closer to each other... Well, too late to fix that, haha.   But you can calculate it better!

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

2. A little lifehack here. To make sure that the cut-outs will look exactly how you want, you can take a piece of paper or carton, cut it according to the size of the postcard and then make a window inside. It will look like a frame and it will be easier for you to imagine how the cutout will look like on the postcard.

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

3. After that, trace the cutouts.

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

4 – optional. You can cut them out now and go to step 5. Or, you can do like me and apply interlining material first. It just makes me a little more confident that the fabric will not be fraying too much by the time I use it on a postcard.

Some fabrics tend to not fray that much (quilting cotton, for example), others are more prone to it. I was using quilting cotton and you can see that even after stitching the edges of the fabric are not fraying that much. Nevertheless, I wanted to be on a safe side :)

So, what I did was cut pieces of interlining (bigger than the actual cutouts would be) and applied them to the back of the fabric.

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

5. And then cut the motifs in rectangular shapes.

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

6. Basically, that's all! Now, if you prefer minimalism, you can glue the motifs to the postcards. It will already make a nice gift with a textured element that holds a piece of your love :)

To me, however, it seemed a bit empty so I decided to decorate the postcard bases first.

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

7. For the first postcard, I used gel pens in golden and red colors and made a motif with leaves decorating the four sides of the postcard. For the second one, I used a golden marker to draw a frame (I wanted it to be a little quirky and awkward. Although, it probably would be even if I tried to make it perfectly neat, haha) and added dots here and there symbolizing falling snow. For the third one, I used a white gel pen to draw the frame and snowflakes flying around. I also took a piece of cotton lace for extra decoration.

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

8. Now you just need to glue the cutouts down to the postcards. Another benefit of using interlining is that the glue will not touch the actual fabric and stitching.

Although I did try this idea beforehand without any interlining and the glue didn't affect neither the fabric nor stitching in any way, I can't say for sure what can happen in the long run :(

This “sandwich” structure, though, when the fabric is glued to the interlining and the interlining is glued to the postcard is safe from all sides and it holds fine :)

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

9 Apply the glue to the marked area generously...

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

10 ...and then you can make sure that the corners are glued as well. They are often not.

So here they are, the ready postcards with hand embroidery!

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

Winter hand embroidery postcards DIY

Not going to lie, I actually REALLY appreciate how easy they turned out to be, and I'm definitely thinking of doing more in the future for the other occasions...

P. S. Sorry if the pictures are a little dull! The weather is very cloudy currently, so even in the daytime my camera can't catch enough light for nice pictures. And my table lamp can't keep up too :D 

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