Craft Gossip

Independent craft blog since 2007

Technique: Fussy cut to perfection

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dresden blanket stitchedI trolled the web looking for fussy cut fabric motifs. I found this wonderful example – a mermaid in a Dresden plate block by Rita from Free Falling blog.

Over the Labor Day weekend, my daughter Brittany fussy cut this quilt block. It’s another good example. Be sure and share your fussy cuts with other Craft Gossip readers. Upload to Flickr Craft Gossip Crafty Reviews and drop me an email to let me know.

Final fussy cut

Definition of Fussy Cut from About.com:Quilting

 To fussy cut is to target and cut a specific motif that’s printed on fabric, rather than randomly cutting yardage as we normally do.

Technorati Tags: fussy cut, motifs, fabric, quilt blocks, dresden plate, crazy piecing, Brittany

Read These Next

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Cross Stitch Cards for All Occasions

I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come. 

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards. 

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

  • get well soon
  • happy birthday
  • thank you
  • thinking of you
  • congratulations
  • anniversary
  • new home
  • good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total). 

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like. 

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered. 

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try. 

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]