A Hand Stitched Background

Hello everyone!

Nicole here today and I am so excited to be sharing with you 

my first tutorial post for Off the Rails Scrapbooking!

You've probably already seen my layout HERE on the mid-month DT reveal on April 16th,

inspired by the beautiful green and pink mood palette, and you might have wondered 

how I created the stitched hexagon design on my background. 

Well, read on because I'm going to show you!

First, I used a stencil as my guide, overlaying it my background paper 

and lightly tracing the desired pattern with a pencil on to the paper.

 

It's a bit difficult to see because I went very light with the pencil,

 but you can still make out the original pattern of the mask.

I then took out one of my favorite and most used crafty tools, my piercer, 

and a good old block of styrofoam.

With the styrofoam block underneath my paper, I started piercing each corner of the hexagons.

I sometimes used the stencil as a guide for my piercing to make sure 

that all my holes were at the right places.  I also decided to create 

a smaller circle pattern among the hexagons by piercing 6 holes 

at the corner of each tip where they intercept.

You can now see the holes that will need stitching.

I was then ready to erase the pencil lines.

I decided to start stitching the smaller circles as they would then serve as guide

for the stitching of the hexagons.  I used 1 strand of regular pink embroidery thread.

Always keeping the desired pattern in mind, I went on stitching tiny circle after tiny circle.

Then came the hexagons' turn!  I used 2 strands of black thread for the hexagons 

to make them pop out more against the green background.

I make sure to keep everything together on the back of my background with regular tape.

Here's a close-up of the my stitched pattern.

You can see that the thickness of the 2 strands make the hexagons stand out more.

And there you go... 

You can now see how it all looks on my finished layout.

Those who are familiar with my work know that I add handmade stitches to most of my layouts.

Yes, it does take more time and patience, but you will agree that the end result is worth it.

And you can use any stencil as a guide or even draw in your own pattern

 (as I often do) so the possibilities are endless.

Stitching just gives any project that extra creative touch that says 'handmade from the heart'. :)

Thank you for joining me today!

If you want to see more of my creations, visit me on my blog HERE.