Stitch Carolyn Letten's folksy welcome gift for a special friend on the move

What you need...

• Fabric: natural cotton\linen blend; cotton print, vintage pea green; ditsy red
  
• Threads: red, dark green, natural
  
• Buttons, vintage cream, three
  
• Ribbon: green stripe, 40cm; red stripe, 10cm
  
• Wadding, 25cm x 17.5cm
  
• Interfacing, heavyweight
  
• Card blanks: A5, 7cm x 10.5cm
  
• Glue stick
  
• Sewing kit
  
• Sewing machine

instructions

1. Welcome Card - 1 Using the template as a guide, cut out your door-shaped card making sure the fold is down the left.
   
   2 Cover the door in plain linen fabric and allow to dry. Add the two roof pieces. Using dark cream thread, stitch lines down the door to give a panelled effect.
   
   3 Stick on a flower pot and cut out some flowers from your patterned fabric, arrange and stitch. Now, cut away the excess piece of card at the left. Stitch ‘Welcome’ onto heavyweight interfacing, then cut it to size and fix as shown. Stitch the hanging detail.

2. Welcome Sign - 1 Cut natural-coloured linen, 10cm x 17cm, and two patterned green end pieces, 5cm x 10cm. Stitch one to each side of the linen leaving a 5mm
   seam allowance. Trim off any excess and press with a warm iron.
   
   2 Take a long piece from the same patterned fabric, 5cm x 28.5cm, and stitch it along one edge of the linen. Cut one more the same size from the
   co-ordinating red fabric and stitch down the remaining side. Iron all seams flat on the reverse.
   
   3 Using red thread, embroider ‘Welcome’ and add further embellishment by drawing flowers and scallop shapes with the machine. Press the reverse and trim all edges so that the finished front measures, 17.5cm x 25cm.
   
   4 Cut green patterned fabric and wadding the same size for the back. Lay the wadding down, on top of the green backing right side up, then put the front piece wrong side up.
   
   5 Trap the two ends of a narrow green ribbon, 38cm, into the top seam tucking the loop into the fabric. Pin together and stitch around the three edges leaving the bottom open. Trim the wadding close to the stitch line, across the corners, and turn right sides out.
   
   6 Insert interfacing, 15.5cm x 22.5cm, turn the bottom raw edges in and close with stitching. To emphasise the frame, stitch around all border pieces, not forgetting to change to red thread for the bottom section. Attach buttons for decoration.
   
   7 To create the mini signs to hang from the bottom, take linen, 6cm x 10cm, apply glue around the edges, then fold trapping a length of red ribbon at the top to form a loop. Leave to dry. Zig zag stitch around the edges and stitch your chosen phrase.