Sarah Becvar: Threading Stories Through Fabric & Cards

In this episode, I welcome Sarah Becvar, a textile artist from England with over 20 years of experience creating machine embroidered textiles and greeting cards. Sarah shares her unique technique for creating beautiful machine embroidered cards and offers practical advice for listeners interested in trying this creative art form.

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About Sarah Becvar

• Based in England
• 20+ years experience (approaching 24 years) in textile arts and card making
• Creates machine embroidered textiles and greeting cards
• Offers in-person workshops at her home studio
• More information can be found on her website at sarahbecvardesign.com

Current Projects

• Spring-themed floral notecards featuring: 
  • Daffodils
  • Primroses
  • Bluebells
  • Lily of the Valley (May birth flower)
• Cards inspired by: 
  • Flowers around her studio
  • Wildflowers from country walks with her dogs
  • Garden flowers (especially dahlias in summer)

Sarah's Card-Making Process

1. Begins with simple line sketches to plan composition
2. Selects small-print fabrics (tiny designs add interest to the finished product)
3. Cuts small fabric pieces without templates
4. Arranges fabric pieces on card to plan placement
5. Uses freehand machine embroidery technique directly on card
6. Sews around fabric pieces while holding them in place with fingers
7. Writes flower names on cards using pencil for a subtle, sophisticated look

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Transcript

Susan Mic: 0:48

Welcome to Season 5 of Measure Twice, Cut Once. This whole season is an exploration into behind the scenes of not just quilting, but building a creative business that truly lights you up. As someone who's navigated the exciting and sometimes bumpy world of turning a passion into a profession, I'm excited to pull back the curtain and share my own experiences. Some episodes will be just me diving deep into my personal journey, while others will feature guests who are also navigating the world of creative entrepreneurship. We'll explore the nitty gritty of building a creative business, the lessons learned, And the unexpected challenges that come with transforming your craft into a thriving enterprise. And don't worry, I'm not leaving storytelling behind. Instead, I'll be weaving them into the conversations about what it takes to grow a business while staying true to your creative spirit. So whether you're dreaming of starting your own business, or you just love hearing about creative entrepreneurship, this season is for you. My guest today is Sarah Becvar, all the way from England, and we are going to chat about her crafty business. Sarah has been creating machine embroidered, textiles and also greeting cards for well over 20 years. Her technique, particularly on the greeting cards is so unique and so original and so very beautiful. So I know you're going to want to give this a try as well. So listen all the way to the end. Sarah gives a mini course in this podcast so that you can try this for yourself. So let's welcome Sarah Welcome, Sarah, to the studio.

Sarah Mic: 2:26

Thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Susan Mic: 2:30

I am such a longtime fan, and I found you, as I imagine many people have on Instagram because of your cards. So let's maybe dive right in the middle, and then we'll go back to the beginning a little later. What are you doing right now with your card making slash embroidery?

Sarah Mic: 2:49

Wow. It's obviously spring at the moment. We're just coming into spring. And right now everything, what's on people's minds are the spring flowers that are going to be uplifting us all. I think really to, bring us out of our winter slumber and bring some joy into our lives. So at the moment I'm currently stitching a lot of floral notecards. Now I offer a collection of floral notecards which are mainly inspired by the flowers that grow around my studio, the flowers that I come across on my daily country walks with my dogs. And also some garden flowers as well. A lot of my inspiration comes from wildflowers, but I do get inspiration in this, particularly in the summer months by the dahlias in the garden and and so forth. So at the moment I'm making a lot of spring cards. So daffodils primroses Bluebells, although the bluebells aren't out yet, but we've got the shoots for their digest about to form. And, some of my customers are incredibly organized and incredibly forward thinking. And, they're buying the Lily of the Valley card because they know that's the birth flower for the month of May. So they're getting their orders in now. Funnily enough, I was actually just making some Christmas cards as well recently, would you I think it's probably the earliest time I've ever made some Christmas cards in the year, but one of my customers was I'm particularly keen on getting some, so I recently made some Christmas cards. But yes, so going back to my sort of everyday cards, the majority that I'm making at the moment are all the Spring Note cards. And they're, I think they're wonderful and cover a broad range of occasions. For starters, they haven't got a specific occasion written on the card. So I actually write the name of the flower on the front of the card. Nothing is written inside. The inside is completely blank for people to add their own personal messages. What I'm finding from my feedback is that people often frame the cards. So the cards are given as a gift as well as wishing somebody well or sentimental thoughts or or happy birthday. It they can cover a broad range of occasions. And it's really lovely to hear that these cards sit on people's mantelpieces for months. Because people like seeing the image on the front and they can't dare to throw it away. And that to me is really special.

Susan Mic: 5:36

For sure. And so maybe we should take a minute and describe for our listeners what you do. And this is of course, what created the connection in my mind. I am a free motion machine quilter, so I use the same movements that you do of hand and medium. Yours is a card, mine is fabric, right? And that kind of free motion, almost embroidery, but describe the type of cards that you're making and how you do that.

Sarah Mic: 6:03

Yeah, sure. Firstly, I'm sure your listeners will be well aware of what freehand embroidery is. Essentially you in are in control of the fabric, or in my case with my cards, I'm in control of the card and we move that around freely to create the design. So with my cards I so directly onto the car blanket itself. I don't attach the fabric to the card with any glue because I find the residue of the glue comes off onto the needle and then eventually the thread breaks. It's incredibly frustrating. So what I'm doing is cutting these small pieces of fabric and it's, I suppose it's an applique technique. I'm holding the fabric in place with my fingers onto the card and I'm stitching around the inside edge of the fabric holding it down with my fingers whilst also holding the card down as well. There's quite a bit to think about when you sew your cards because as you can imagine when the needle is moving up and down there's a lot of friction and the card does tend to bounce around a bit and to guess a really lovely fluid straight line with your cards you have to put a little bit of pressure onto that card with your fingers. So not only are your fingers holding the pieces of fabric, your fingers are also spread around the card to try and keep it down and hold it in place and then move it around to create your design. So there's quite a lot to think about and when I'm making my cards, before I even put the needle into the card, I lay the fabric pieces out onto the card blank so that I know exactly where I'm stitching, so that I know that the image is going to be centred in my card and in proportion so I've got a little bit of space at the top and a little bit of space at the bottom enough for me to write down the name of the flower or the occasion. And once I've laid, put them into the correct placings, I then sew the first piece on. What I find is, whilst I'm sewing, I then move the fabric pieces away because of the vibrations that I was talking about earlier. Those little fabric pieces then start bouncing around all over the place. So I very quickly brush them away. But I know, in my mind, I know where I'm going to be stitching because I know where I have that leaf place, for example, so I know where I'm going to be heading and where I then stop to position the leaf and then again hold the leaf down, hold the fabric down whilst I stitch around the inside.

Susan Mic: 8:50

Okay, you did it. You did a great job of describing something that's intricate. It's really intricate. So you don't have a pattern at all, but you do preplan it a little bit so that you know where you're heading.

Sarah Mic: 9:03

yes, I always pre plan. So even before I cut the fabrics out I start off with a sketch. And my sketches for my cards are always very simple. It's simply just a line. There is no point in me spending time adding shading or even really colour at this point. It's purely just lines. And that's it. Sometimes, so that I get the proportions exactly right, I'll draw the the template of the cards. At the moment, my current range of cards is 15 centimetres square. So I'll draw that square within a sketchbook, and then I'll draw a little sketch of a violet, for example, within that boundary, so I know exactly how big my leaves and my petal's going to be. And from that point, I then select my fabrics. And now, choosing fabrics for card making is quite important because you want I believe that it's nice to see some of the design on the print of the fabric. It adds to the design of your finished piece. It adds a lovely element to it. So I always choose. printed fabrics that have got very tiny prints. Some of them are multi coloured, some of them are self coloured. It really depends on the type of flower that I want to create. So I select my fabric and then I cut the petals or the leaves out of those fabrics. And at this point I don't really draw a template. Onto the fabric before I cut, I simply cut, and that's purely down to the fact that I have been cutting flowers and leaves for years and years, and I could probably do it with my eyes closed, although I've never tried that. But I would cut the petals, or the flower head out, and then I would cut the leaves out, so that I've got my pieces, and take them over to my sewing machine and the process then starts with me, me sewing. When I create a brand new design, sometimes that process can take four or five attempts before I'm actually really happy with the finished piece. Sometimes, and very occasionally, I'd say I can create a piece. Just by, sketching it and cutting it just the once, sewing it just the once, and then I'm really happy with it. But that, that happens fairly infrequently.

Susan Mic: 11:29

Honestly, that's quite encouraging because I've tried a couple of these myself since seeing you do it. And I wasn't thrilled necessarily with the results. And I'm thinking of a rose that I did that I tried three times. And what you're saying to me is, Three times isn't really enough, like to call that success or failure. You need to keep doing it and improve each time.

Sarah Mic: 11:50

Absolutely. And it's with anything new, any technique that you do, it's going to take you a while to get into it to feel comfortable doing it, to feel confident doing the technique. It really is a case of keep practicing. And I say this to my students who I teach, who come to my workshops, that you're not just suddenly going to get it, it takes a lot of practice. And this. a lot to think about. Not only are you holding the card down from, keeping it nice and still you're moving it. And particularly I find Those people who are regular machine sewers, and regular as in they've stitched straight lines and, they might be making their patchwork quilts or whatever their brain is telling them You can't it's wrong to, to move that fabric in a circle, what are you doing? And their hands are going all over the place and their brownie's saying, no, stop, you can't do it like that. So it does take a while sometimes for the more experienced machine sewers to adjust to that freedom of, you can actually sew in whatever direction you want. So it's always a case of perseverance and stick with it and eventually it will just come. And with any design, new design that anybody is creating, it does, you do go through a few kind of practice versions. You don't just suddenly create a finished piece. Very rarely would you. But, the majority of the time you do have to go through this process and it is a creative process and it's a positive one as well. You mustn't look at things negatively or the fact that it's taking such a long time because Throughout all of that process, you're learning from it. You're learning, Oh, actually, I think my leaves need to be a bit smaller, or I need to think more about the composition. And that comes through this process, however long it will be. You can't hurry these things either. You can't put pressure on yourself to,

Susan Mic: 13:55

It's so true. It is a creative art and it matters that you give yourself time to process and to play, I feel like.

Sarah Mic: 14:04

absolutely.

Susan Mic: 14:05

You alluded to the fact that you hold workshops, and again, I've seen photos of these too. I'm totally jealous, because of course I live way across the pond. But you hold workshops in your studio, right? Sort of amidst your garden.

Sarah Mic: 14:19

I do. Yes. Yes, I do. I'm very fortunate to have quite a large studio and I can hold up to seven or eight people within my studio here, which is in my home garden. And I offer two types of workshops. So I offer a shorter morning session, but within that session we can complete. a single project from start to finish and I also offer full day workshops. Now my full day workshops are held in the summer and these days are absolutely wonderful. They're almost like a kind of a short retreat or some people have called them a spa day because they spend the whole day being creative and over the summer, and I'm touching wood that we do have a lovely summer, that, the weather's nice, the flowers are out in front of the studio, and we can actually sit outside and have our lunch, and we can talk about, our current creative projects, and then come back in and come to work. And within that full day, We can complete up to two projects again from start to finish. So it just allows people to be, to just get fully immersed in their creativity on the machine. And that's all I ever really want with my workshops. I'm really, I hope to encourage people and hope to inspire people just to be a little bit more creative on their machines. I mentioned the people that are. generally make, clothes or soft furnishings and have never even considered the fact that their feed dog on the machine can lower and they can actually sew in different, many different directions. So I'm really, I'm hoping that the workshops encourage people to explore more creativity on their machines and and just produce so much. Or creative work, freehand machine embroidery, you can add to anything. As you yourself know with your beautiful quilts, that's the lovely one that's behind you. I presume that's yours.

Susan Mic: 16:24

It is.

Sarah Mic: 16:25

And it can be on clothing, it can be on bags. I make bookmarks, I make apes. aprons with the freehand machine embroidered flower on the front. There's so many ways that you can incorporate freehand machine embroidery into a project and generally everybody who leaves at the end of the day or the end of the morning session is confident to continue that technique at home and and that's what it's all about really. That's what I want to do to make sure people are confident in, continuing this in their own time.

Susan Mic: 17:02

Perfect.

17:04

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Susan Mic: 17:57

So I'm curious, as a quilt maker, when I go to retreats or sit down and chat with friends, one of our jokes often is around how small of scraps do you keep? So my question is what do you do with fabric that gives you these scraps? Or do you acquire fabric just for the embroidery that you do? And how tiny of scraps do you hang on to?

Sarah Mic: 18:19

It's interesting. I, over the years and particularly. People I've met on Instagram, I get messages saying I've got a big bag of scraps. I've got a bag of Liberty fabrics. Do you want them? And I always say, yes, please. I can use the scraps. Now I'm, I've got cards here, but for the benefits of your listeners, these pieces are. I don't know, maybe a centimetre or two centimetres long. They are, they can be very tiny. And I'll just show this card up to the screen, Susan. Where are we there? Can you see

Susan Mic: 18:53

There you go. Now

Sarah Mic: 18:54

daffodil, the centre of the daffodil there is really tiny. So you certainly have to watch your fingers when you sew the pieces are very small. I have had pieces of fabric that I've had sitting in my cupboard for years. And that's probably because I bought a metre of the fabric and Because I'm using such tiny amounts of it, it just lasts such a long time. But I never throw anything away and particularly with card making it's a fantastic way of using up all those tiny scraps that you just can't bear to throw away.

Susan Mic: 19:33

Good to the last drop, as the old coffee commercial used to say.

Sarah Mic: 19:36

Absolutely.

Susan Mic: 19:37

just, you can use every little tiny piece of that fabric that you loved so much. I'm curious too about your lettering, which is beautiful on your cards. Is that just your natural, handwriting, or did you actually make that a focal point? You went and learned hand lettering in some way.

Sarah Mic: 19:54

No, it is simply my handwriting

Susan Mic: 19:57

I love that. It so suits your style. It's just, it's soft. It's a little bit whimsical. It so suits the style of cards and embroidery that you do.

Sarah Mic: 20:08

Thank you, that's really kind. And again, I think because I write, I use pencil, I don't ever use a pen. In my eyes, I think a pen is a little bit too harsh. The cards themselves are sophisticated. And the writing, I think, needs to not overpower that, embroidery. So the pencil allows the writing just to be a little bit more subtle and hopefully sophisticated. I dread to think how many times I've written the words happy birthday, but it must be. Hundreds of thousands.

Susan Mic: 20:41

Oh

Sarah Mic: 20:42

I would be quite interested to, to find out, but of course I can't now. I've been running my business for 20 years now. So, coming up to actually 24 years. That's a lot of happy birthdays I've written.

Susan Mic: 20:55

So that's not a question I had thought of, but I now am. Like, how many cards do you think you make in a calendar year? And I know you embroider other things too, but let's just count the cards for a moment. Any

Sarah Mic: 21:08

what? I have absolutely no idea. I've, funnily enough I had an enormous amount of Christmas card orders. Just this Christmas gone and I was absolutely rushed off my feet. But I, I got everything done. I wasn't stressed. It was all, I kept my cool, everything. I stayed on top of things basically. And I kept the pile of orders because I thought, wow, I've had such a fantastic season. I'm just going to pile the orders up. Once I've packed them up and posted them. Put a tick through the order and I'm going to leave them piled up on my desk to remind myself of what I've achieved and a little part of me wants to sit and count all the cards that I made just for that season, but to be perfectly honest I've not actually had the time to do it.

Susan Mic: 23:29

You're so busy making cards, right?

Sarah Mic: 23:31

so busy making, that's it, and, working for yourself. Gosh, you, the list is endless of all the jobs that you have to do, and counting the number of cards I made over the Christmas period I'm afraid is bottom of the list.

Susan Mic: 23:50

I understand that. I understand that. So I'm wondering, again, because I live in North America, you're in England, my question is there an opportunity for folks like me who'd like to learn more, who'd love to attend your workshop, but can't physically come to one, do you do anything that's virtual or online or do you offer Zoom style presentations or anything like that for those who are much further away?

Sarah Mic: 24:14

It's really lovely that you asked, because I'm actually about to launch some live Zoom tutorials.

Susan Mic: 24:22

Sign me up, please.

Sarah Mic: 24:24

You're top of the list. I get so many questions from people all over the world through my Instagram account. Which I find so lovely. The fact that I'm reaching it or able to reach out to so many people and so many people are interested in this technique and wants to learn more. And yes, I offer my studio workshops. But I totally appreciate that people are interested like yourself, but you just can't hop on a plane and join me for a day, particularly with your sewing machine.

Susan Mic: 24:58

It does bring up the cost of a greeting card quite a bit.

Sarah Mic: 25:02

yes, it does a little bit, doesn't it? The offering something online, It's just the next step forward for me and will open the door to my teaching and people's awareness of the technique as well. So I'm really excited about that. I just have to Get over the few sort of technical issues and and then I'll be well on my way, but I'm hoping they're going to be very soon.

Susan Mic: 25:30

Good. I'm happy to hear that. As we come to a close, I wonder if there is a small and I'm springing this on you, but a small gem of wisdom that you could offer to someone who is just getting started at this. Like, I'll let you decide. What would you say to that beginner that would help them

Sarah Mic: 25:48

Goodness me, I think, I think there's probably, I'm going to repeat myself from the beginning of the conversation to basically say persevere. and keep practicing because you're not just suddenly going to get it. So I would just simply say give yourself plenty of time and expect that there are going to be hiccups along the way. I think if we're prepared for things to go wrong, then It's easier to come through them. And, talking about things that could go wrong, I think the most common issues, certainly that I experience with my workshops, are tension issues on the sewing machine thread breakages as well, and then the, the direction, how they're going to move that card around. So regarding the tension, I would always recommend people just to loosen their tension slightly, because if you're thinking about you are moving the fabric or the card and the needle is going down and you're putting a bit more pressure on that needle and that thread, just easing the tension slightly will help and breakages from that. I would recommend using a nice sharp needle. Now when you're sewing on card, I actually use a size 70. It might seem a little on the slender, delicate side, but it leaves a very small hole in the card. Obviously, if you increase the needle size, you're going to increase the hole that's made in the card. And I do like things to be a little delicate, and the 70 needle works really well. Thread, I would recommend good quality thread, because again, you're just, you might be putting a little bit more pressure on it. I use Gutermann Sew All Threads I highly recommend them. I would avoid the cheaper threads because they will just fray and break and it can be very frustrating and you want to limit those problems. You don't want to be frustrated because you'll end up walking away and never going back to it. So make your life as simple as possible to begin with and try and use a good quality thread. Regarding fabrics, if you're sewing fabrics onto card, I wouldn't use a very fine fabric and I wouldn't recommend a very heavy fabric. I would find a cotton poly mix or just a cotton just a dress fabric, weight, nothing too heavy. And So that there's not too much added pressure onto the needle or the thread as well. And weight of card, that's another thing to consider. At the moment I, I would recommend about a 250 gram card, weighting card. You don't want anything that's too thin or flimsy because you could end up bending it when you move it, and the card could then rip. Also when you're sewing on your cards, just sew over one line twice,

Susan Mic: 28:42

So in other words, don't go back and forth over your stitching or you get, you perforate it.

Sarah Mic: 28:48

What tends to happen, what will happen is the card will eventually split. And you don't want that. So you, you've got to treat the card very delicately. So you can create you can sew fabric onto your card with quite a few stitches. But once you sew directly onto the card itself without the fabric, you're only limited to really just sewing one line or back on itself once. Never backwards and forwards because that card will just go not having it and split. um, treat it carefully.

Susan Mic: 29:22

Thinking of perhaps a stem, for a flower, right? That's where you'd be stitching on the card where no fabric perhaps is underneath

Sarah Mic: 29:28

exactly. And also not wanting everything to be so perfect. So I remember a while back I put a reel on Instagram of me sewing a daffodil flower and I happened to stitch over the edge of the fabric and then go back into the centre of the flower and A lady came to my workshop and she saw that I had done that and said, I'm so pleased I saw you stitch over the edge. Because then I realized that it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't matter that you go over the edge. And in fact you want it to look handmade. You want it to look like you have created it yourself. And if everything looked so perfect and exactly the same, I don't think people would believe perhaps that you've created it. You want it to be. You, like your handwriting, sometimes your letters can be a little bit larger than the next letter and you just want it to look as natural as possible. And it doesn't matter at all if that means that you sew over the edge of the fabric. It's not a problem.

Susan Mic: 30:31

Well done, Sarah. You've packed a whole mini course of material into the last five minutes. That's really helpful.

Sarah Mic: 30:43

I hope that it encourages people just to give it a go.

Susan Mic: 30:48

I think so, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing with me. I'm curious on a personal level. I'm coming to the Birmingham Quilt Show this coming summer. Are you by chance going to be there?

Sarah Mic: 31:00

Unfortunately, not. I was, no, I'm a little disappointed because I did submit. some workshop ideas and subsequently found out just the other day that they hadn't actually received them. So I'm not going to be running any workshops there unfortunately, but I am running a workshop at the Stitch Festival which is coming up in a few weeks in London, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Susan Mic: 31:25

Lovely. Thank you so much for spending this half hour with it. I appreciate it.

Sarah Mic: 31:30

Thank you so much Susan, it's been a pleasure.

Susan Mic: 31:33

We've been visiting with Sarah Becvar of Sarah Becvar Design. She does And this is quoting from her Instagram bio, freehand machine embroidered textiles. But Sarah caught my eye because of her very creative greeting cards, embellished with fabric and thread, in a technique that's very much like free motion quilting. So of course this appealed to me. Same types of motions and movements and machine control. So I tell you what, if you are in need of a bright spot in your day, Check out Sarah's feed. We've put links to her content and material in the show notes. Check that out, scroll through her feed a little bit, give her a little love. And I thank you for all the wonderful tips that she shared with us today. And my friend until next time, may your sorrows be patched and your joys be quilted.