Are you looking for a card that is unique? You’ll love making this card yourself and using scraps to do it! This is a great project for using scraps and for young sewists to gain confidence in their skill while making something for others.

If this is one of your first projects, you can check out some of the foundational tools available in our Sewing Circle! For this tutorial, you will be especially helped by the Learn to Pivot Sewing Guides where you can practice pivoting on the needle. Check out my blog post Learn to Pivot to learn how to use the guide.

Let’s jump in and see how easy it is to make our own Scrappy Card.

Supplies

• Fabric Scraps of various sizes
• Cardstock Paper
• Thread (it will mostly be hidden inside your card, but you could use a fun color for the outside sewing)

Tools

• Sewing Machine
• Cricut Machine
• Heart with Dots Card project from Cricut Design Space (free)
• Fine Point Blade (usually the cutting tool that comes with a Cricut)
• Cutting Mat (I used the Strong Grip)
• Iron and Ironing Board/Wool Mat
• Rotary Cutter and Cutting Mat (it’s good to have a rotary cutter reserved for fabric and another for paper, you can also use a different tool to cut the paper)
• Fabric Scissors
• Needle (note: when sewing through paper, it does dull your needle so it may be a good idea to have one needle you use with paper and put it into your machine when doing something crafty like this)

Directions

Gather all of your supplies and get ready to make a card!

Prepare the Paper Elements of Your Card

1. The insert paper for the card is included in the Cricut Design Space project, but I like to cut the inner piece a little bit bigger so that I have room to trim at the end. You’ll see the size it will be in the end in the pictures below (4″ x 5.25″). You can cut a 8.5″ x 11″ piece of cardstock in half two ways so that you have four 4.25″ x 5.5″ cards to sew on.
2. Use the Heart with Dots Card project to make the outside of the card with your Cricut machine. I like to prep all the cards that we will be making at once and if it’s a multiple of four like step 1 gives us, that’s even better! For the outside of the card, you can also use fancy scrapbook paper which comes a little bigger and cut a few at the same time. I placed an 8.5″ x 11″ cardstock landscape so that I could cut two of the outer cards at the same time, but it is a little too small and tricky.

Crumb Quilt Your Card

3. You’ll choose one fabric to be your focal point, which will show in the middle of the heart. For the example below, my daughter chose a llama fabric and we cut it a little smaller so that we could feature other fabrics around it.
4. Place the focal fabric in the middle of your card insert right side facing up. Place another fabric on top so that right sides are together and sew a 1/4″ seam along the right side of the fabrics. It will sew them to the card insert.
5. Use some scissors to cut the top fabric to be even with your focal fabric. You’ll notice that we lined up the top edges of the fabrics so that we only needed to trim the bottom edge.

Press and Repeat

6. Take the card insert over to your ironing surface to press the fabric open. You can put your iron on a lower setting to do this.
7. If your fabric is longer than the card insert, you can turn the insert over making sure the fabric is lying nicely underneath and use a ruler to cut the fabric to the same size of the card.
8. You’ll continue to build your fabric insert in the same way, from Step 3 and following. Check out the YouTube tutorial at the end of this post to see how to do this step by step.
9. After the whole card is covered in fabric, you will trim around the edges to make it the correct size of approximately 4″ x 5.25″. If it is a little smaller that is okay, you just want to be able to hide it in the outer card.

Finish Your Card

10. After it is trimmed, fold the Hearts with Dots outer card in two and slide your fabric insert inside. Use a 1/8″ seam allowance to sew the three open sides closed. You can turn it over and write a message on the back!

Check out the YouTube tutorial to walk through all of the steps with me:

Finished Product

We made many cards for friends this Valentine’s Day. My daughter and son loved using the sewing machine and growing in their confidence and skill. I enjoyed seeing them love it so much!

For more tutorials, check out our Sewing Circle for inspiration. They are great for all ages and for building your sewing skills.

Until next time, keep sewing <3 Kate

Sewing Guide Downloads

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links from which I may receive a small payment at no extra cost to you. I really encourage you to visit your local quilt shop when looking for quilting supplies because it so encouraging to build relationships locally and to support those shops. My favorite local quilt shop is Warman Cozy in Barrington, Illinois. I can’t wait to hear about your local quilt shop!