This is a birthday card that I made for my brother who is a train enthusiast. When the ribbon at the back of the card is pulled a slider causes the middle of the card to fold so that the train is pulled upright.
The slider mechanism can be used with a stitching pattern of your choice. I have used the train pattern that can be purchased as part of the Form-A-Lines steam set. It is stitched in green, grey and silver thread on cream linen card. The card base is a grey linen card.
The card was a joint effort between my wife and I. Linda made the sliding base and I stitched the train.
The base
The base is formed by a sandwich of three layers with the slider in the middle (like the sandwich filling). The first illustration shows the top layer of the sandwich. The next illustration shows the slider on top of the lower layer of card. The third illustration is a cross section side view showing the layers assembled.
The size of the base can be varied to suit the subject. Cut two rectangles of card the same size.
In one of the rectangles cut an internal shape going from A to B, from B to C and from C to D.
Score along lines A to D and E to F to make folds.
Cut a section from the back edge to make a grip for the slider.
The slider is cut the depth of the base card and the width of the internal cut lines. Fold it along line A to B.
This is assembled like a sandwich. The diagram below shows a cross section of the card. We used self-adhesive double-sided tape around the edges of the base card to fix it to the top card.
The slider is fixed to the folding section with self-adhesive double-sided tape.
This is a photograph of card with the slider in.
This is the slider pulled out.
The train
I stitched the train on a sheet of cream linen finish card. I kept in mind that the train would eventually be cut out so made sure that the taped ends of the threads were within the boundaries of the train shape. Using a pencil I marked up the shape that I was going to cut. This allowed me to get the shape right before committing it to the knife. Then I cut out the shape with a craft knife using a cutting mat.
I mounted the cut-out on another sheet of card to hide the stitch work. It was fixed with self-adhesive double-sided tape. This was cut out following the edges of the top sheet. I could have fixed the two sheets together and cut both at the same time but doing it separately gave me a couple of advantages. Firstly if I had cut through a thread by mistake I could have repaired it. Secondly it allowed me to place the adhesive tape where it would be most effective.
The train cut-out was then mounted on the front folding part of the base card using and fixed with self-adhesive double-sided tape.
This is a side view of the card with the stitched train picture in position.
A Happy Birthday sticker is added near the front.
The Form-A-Lines steam patterns can be purchased from the Form-A-Lines Classics store as a download.
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