Panda in stitch

A Valentine’s card! And as seems to be the routine with cards these days, I didn’t give myself a lot of time to get it made. It starts with not having any ideas, and then I come up with an idea that will inevitably require more time and energy than I actually have, but somehow I manage to get it finished just in time anyway. It’s not the most relaxing process but (annoyingly) it seems to work.

I’d had a look through my stash and was coming up uninspired, so I looked at my inspiration sources and that wasn’t much better. Eventually I remembered that I’d had the idea to see if could get more life out of my digi stamps by using them as embroidery patterns.

Back to the stash, and I found this old digi stamp from way back when Gerda Steiner used to run a regular monthly challenge. I originally coloured this Panda in Love with Copic markers.

I printed him out on paper and used my light box to transfer the design onto some cotton. Then, not having done anything like this so far, I just had to do the embroidery. And I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. With more time I would probably have outlined the hearts so that they were a bit more defined, but it’s good enough for a first attempt. And I am pleased with how fluffy the panda looks.

I’m also pleased with the sentiment. I hand wrote it straight onto the cotton and then stitched over it with tiny stitches. Again, it could be a little neater, but again, first time I’d tried doing it. I’m not sure I’ll ever get into the habit of practising techniques before using them on final projects…

I trimmed the cotton down to size and used double-sided tape to attach it to a piece of stiff card and then simply mounted that onto a card base. As an experiment in using digi stamps as embroidery patterns, I think it worked.