Vintage Stitched Christmas Card Art

Don’t you love those old colorful Christmas Cards? I think they are so sweet – and sometimes funny too! The illustrations are so sweet – and definitely perfect for my vintage loving heart.

I was browsing around online and came across this darling Vintage Bells card. Isn’t it great? I just fell in love with the graphics and colors. I thought it would be so cute as a Christmas display – but in a cute Stitched up form!

I’ve recreated the basic design and used free motion stitching to “draw” out the details. It was so fun to make up! I’ve finished up with some easy little French Knots – they give it a fun 3D look don’t you think?

I used my machine to stitch on the details, but you could get a really cool effect with hand embroidery too!

How to make this Vintage Stitched Christmas Card Art:

Materials:

• small fabric for bells – I used pink, turquoise, and white and a tiny scrap of green.
• fusible webbing
• background fabric – about 12″ x 16″
• coordinating embroidery floss
• 8 x 10 frame
• fusible fleece, cardboard for framing
• Bells Pattern – This pattern is hand drawn – but I wanted to include it so you could see the details on the bells. You can use the drawings as a guide for the details if you need to.

Iron your fusible webbing to the back of your bell fabrics. Cut out the bell shapes.

Peel off the fusible backing and iron the bells in place on the background fabric. I left the white bell off, since it overlaps a few of the others. We’ll add that in later.

Draw on your designs with a disappearing ink pen. I used the Christmas card as a guide – it doesn’t have to be perfect, or even exactly like this.

Place your free motion foot on your machine and drop your feed dogs. (If you can’t drop the feed dogs you can still do it, you’ll just need to hold the fabric a little more firmly to push it where you want it to go). “Draw” over the lines on the bell by stitching over them. Go around the lines twice – this will make things a little darker and also help give it that sketched look. Outline the entire bell and clapper ball in stitching as well. Use the image below as a guide.

Repeat for the other bells, and the strings they hang from.

Iron the white bell in place and stitch the details. Add in your colored stitching – the little bows on the bells, the details on the bells, and the holly.

To stitch the holly, I started at the bottom of each holly piece and just made messy zig zags up towards the top to form the leaf shape.

Add in your French Knot details, using the photo as a guide. Each bell has a few, and there are little knots around the bells as well.

Remove any marking lines left on the piece and get it ready for framing. Cut an 8 x 10 piece of fusible fleece and center it on the back of the design. Fuse in place.Wrap the piece around an 8 x 10 piece of cardboard tightly and glue to the back.

Pop your artwork in a frame and you now have a super cool new-vintage Christmas stitchery!

I think it would be a great gift too!