Thursday Trends - Hand stitching

I decided to focus on hand stitching for the Thursday Trends this week.  Now I know hand stitching is not new, but you can’t look in a scrapbooking gallery today without seeing it on at least a few different projects.  For those of you that know me, this is one of my ABSOLUTE favorite techniques (besides machine stitching).  You can find some sort of stitching on probably 99% of my projects.

For my hand stitching project today, I made a fun little bucket of flowers.  There is not a ton of stitching involved, which makes it perfect for beginners and advanced stitchers alike.   You will see that a little bit can definitely add a lot.  You get color and texture- two for the price of one.  The main tools you will need for hand stitching are a needle, some embroidery thread, a paper piercer, and a craft mat.

For the flowers,  I placed a felt flower on the craft mat and pierced holes in each of the petals and one in the center with my paper piercer.  I then pulled the threaded needle up through the center from the underside and down through one of the petal holes, repeating this for each of the other petals.  When I finished I knotted the thread ends on the underside of the flower.

For the flower leaves and sentiment button, I pierced holes in the chipboard and added a few stitches, starting from the underside and working my way around and knotting the ends on the back side.

Products used - Enchanting paper:  Pleasant, Delightful, Wonderful Enchanting embellishments: Brads, Alphabet Stickers, Sticker Book, Chipboard Elements Fascinating embellishments:  Chipboard Elements Fetching embellishments:  Brads Office Lingo paper:  Outside the Box

I hope my project tempts you to try this fun technique, if you haven’t already.  You may just start doing it on all of your future projects. 

Thanks so much and have a great rest of the week!