In Stitches

Sew, I wanted to take a bit of time today to talk to you about a little stitch-uation I like to call stitching on layouts. It's something that I love doing… well, I don't love that it can be sorta challenging and intimidating because sometimes it can just go wrong, and sometimes your machine has a mind of it's own and gets hungry and just eats your paper! (just me? oh, ok.)…. but the overall look and texture of it really takes projects to the next level, I feel. It just makes them look more finished and polished to me.

Lately I've been playing around a lot with machine stitching. On this layout I wanted to use random lines around the page to add some texture and visual interest….

In fact I planned the project around stitching, instead of putting it on at the end as a finishing touch. On a page like this it's good to have a plan so that you aren't just sewing right on top of all of your wonderful layers.

A little trick I used (that is probably a total no-brainer but it never occurred to me before), is to draw really faint lines with a ruler. Then you'll have a guide for keeping things straight, instead of eyeballing and failing. 

Something I have ideas for, that I'll share when they finally make it onto paper, is using multiple colors and machine stitching. This wouldn't have necessarily been successful on the project above since there is already a LOT going on. But what about doing this same thing with various colors on a page and less embellishments? Instead of stitching being a background accent it would become the focal point of the page. Your friends will flip through your album and say, "oh! I didn't know you could sew!" And you'll say, "I didn't either."

 Here's another way I used stitching to anchor some of the patterned paper…

Stitching took this page to the next level, for sure. It lent a quilt-like look to it and enabled me to pull on the edges of the cards to add some more texture…

and on this one you can see how it was used as a finishing touch, very subtly….

So go forth, fellow scrappers, sew your scrappy little hearts out… play around with it and see what fun it is!  I've even been going back on some of my older pages and adding it here and there. --Just be careful not to do it during nap time because you might wake the baby! (Every time! Just me? Oh, ok.)