Combining French knitting and quilling on a card

HB140

When I first started learning how to do French knitting last month, I always had a thought at the back of my mind about how to use it as part of the decoration on my handmade cards. If I could combine it with quilling that would be even better. So the thought never left my mind. I knew I had to combine them somehow, one day. 

So I did some research on what people would use the French Knitting (i-cords) for. I was really surprised at the things that people can make with it. However I didn't find any examples of the i-cords used for cards, but I did find that there are people who made hearts, ribbons, stars and many other shapes with it. So, it's all up to your imagination to design whatever you fancy and make it your own.

This month I have a birthday card to make for a dear friend of mine and she's really crazy about hearts!! She loves hearts so much I tell ya! Haha! So I thought the ideas I had for this birthday card couldn't have come at the right time for her. In my previous blog post, I've already shown in it some photos of the i-cords that I used to make heart shapes with. See the photo below :

As you can see, I used Lily yarns to make the i-cord. Two different colours knitted together, to show contrast. I have lots of Lily yarns left from my previous projects, so I love the fact that I can use them up for making knitted hearts. There was lots of trials and errors before I could get that particular size. Since Lily yarns are not that thick, I had to double it to get that size.

After that I kept thinking of what shapes of quilling that would be suitable to arrange in the middle of the heart. I thought of using the quilling vortex coils because ever since I made a video of how to make them, I myself have never actually used them as decorations for any of my handmade cards. So it was great that I could use them now for this one. I made lots of them, just small sized ones in different shades of red and rose to match the colours of the knitted heart.

Usually for all my handmade quilling cards, I would use shredded quilling papers, but this time around I decided to use 5 mm standard quilling papers that I bought some time ago. The vortex coils look really neat when quilled with this paper compared to the shredded papers because the shredded papers don't have that smooth finish on the edges. So I really love the look of those vortex coils! 

As for the background decorations, I wanted to use the embroidery threads and create a pattern by sewing on the card. It's a quick, easy and simple way to beautify and fill up the empty spaces. It was a lot of fun sewing it.

I'm really excited about the pop up hearts that I used for the card! I bought it from the diy shop and it's really wonderful. So easy to use and saves me a lot of time. All that is needed to do is just paste it inside the card and then I could randomly add on more punch out hearts and sentiments on it to make it my own. There's just so many ways to make it different, again it's all up to our imagination whether we want it simple or elaborate.

I hope to make more of this card soon. It's fun to make and it can be used for more than just one occasion. That's what I love about it. Hope my friend loves it as much as I do!! Need to post it as soon as possible! :D :D

By the way, do check out the video below and see how the card pops up lots of hearts inside it! Thank you!! :)