Hand Stitching Tutorial (Artfull Crafts)

Good morning! I'm on the Artfull Crafts blog today with another layout made with the beautiful Kaisercraft Telegraph Road.  This time I decided to make a clean-style layout featuring the majority of patterned papers from the collection on a white cardstock background.  I punched out a heap of circles from the 6x6 paper pad, then arranged them in a grid.  I layered my photo and one of the 4x6 cut-apart cards, and then placed the entire layout on a piece of patterned paper from Crate Paper (Flea Market by Maggie Holmes) to create a border.  

I kept the embellishment simple too, with some wood veneer hearts, a Paper Bakery flair badge, and white tag which I stamped and embellished, and some grey ink splatters.  My journalling explains that my daughter and I went shopping to buy her some new winter clothes, and of course she had to pick pink jeans with white hearts!  I will admit that if there had been adult sizes I would have got a pair too!

As my sewing machine wasn't cooperating I decided to hand stitch around the cardstock, to both assist in adhering the paper, and to create a feature in itself.  The following tutorial explains my process:

1. Measure and pencil in an even line around the cardstock then pierce holes at even distances apart ( I did this freehand).   

2. Erase the pencil lines. My favourite eraser to use on cardstock is an electric eraser from Smiggle:

3. Select the embroidery thread you wish to use:

4. I use washi tape to secure the thread on the back of my layout, this saves having to tie knots.

5. Back-stitch around the perimetre of the layout using the pierced holes.  This is painstakingly slow but so worth it.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  I love the extra texture that machine and hand stitching adds to my layouts, and it ensures that my layers are secure.  You can purchase the Telegraph Road Collection in the shop here.

Thanks for looking, see you in March!

Melissa