Love your idea and I have played around with that idea a bit myself. Haven't made any cards yet...still toying with how to. Anyway...for applique there is a product called Heat and Bond which comes in a couple of different "stiffness". You iron it to the wrong side of your fabric and then peel off the paper backing and then iron onto your main fabric. Be careful or the stuff gets onto your iron and board and can be a mess to clean off. Anyway there is another product called Timtex that is really stiff and would give your card an almost cardboard type feel. Use it as backing to the main fabric of your applique. For puffiness you can also use fusible fleece or regular batting.
This is what I would do: decide on the fabric for the background. Decide on the fabric to be used for the mini quilt you talked about. After the mini quilt is designed iron some heat and bond on the back of it and iron it to your background. Then use your decorative stitches to "quilt" it to the background. When this top part is done, layer with some fusible fleece or batting with the Timtex stuff, bind off the edges and voila, you have a card.
Good grief...after re-reading what I wrote I wonder if this makes any sense....anyway. It may give you some ideas of what product to look for and a method of madness too. I hope it helps and you have inspired me. I bought a fabric panel of Maxine sayings and thought about making cards out of it.
Maybe someone who has actually done this will chime in with more better ideas.
Please let us know what you did and post a picture.
Murphy

Hi! I'm usually on the care giver forum but was looking around and saw your post. I made a card for a family member several years ago--I think yours sounds like it will be very pretty. I didn't want mine floppy either so I used a pretty heavy weight interfacing (the kind you get at walmart). It wasn't too stiff but still had a little soft "flop" to it. In fact, thinking back, I might have doubled it for added stiffness (it's been a while ago). I added some mini quilting on mine too around the edges. The only thing I fussed with was trying to cut down on the bulk of all those seams--I did a lot of seam triming. I also pressed with a lot of starch. Good luck--would love to see a pic of the finished product!

Thank you for your advice. I did it.... I'm too tired to post pictures here too, but check the quilting forum under "I guess this is quilting".

saw the card on the quilting forum....great job.
just love it.
Murphy

A lot of older women that use to sew seem to like the older style of trims, such as ric-rack and lace. I have known of someone putting that plastic canvas (Rows and rows of tiny squares made out of plastic and used a lot for craft projects) to stiffen projects. it can be easily removed if you just whip-stitch it into the bottom of the card. I'm another one great for ideas and practice-runs, so I have a lot of craft and sewing project ideas/patterns that I never do much with. If I meet someone who does that type of craft I'll teach them and then let it go.