I have always loved, if the time allows it, to make gifts for my loved ones. A good sign that I really like you is if I make you something. However, that if time allows it disclaimer tends to get in the way a lot more than I would like. But, for Mother's Day I happened to dig around and find a little extra time to make something for my mom.
If you are reading this, Happy early Mother's Day, Mom!
Part of my finding extra time had to do with two different loves, the love for my mom and wanting to make her something unique and special and the love I have for stitching. I was sitting there the other day thinking about how much I love hand stitching on my layouts and how often I am slightly disappointed when I'm done with the stitching part on my layouts. I seriously enjoy it so much that I find myself wishing I could do more. Thinking about that and looking at embroidery stuff on Pinterest made me think, why can't I create larger and more detailed stitching designs on paper? If I love it so much, why not cover a whole page in it?
So that's exactly what I did.
I found a quote I liked, added the large MOM in the center and my happy little stitching heart when to town, stitching away.
To get started with hand stitching you will need a foam or cork board, a paper piercer, a needle, and some embroidery floss. I also used some painters tape, more on that next...
I stared by designing the quote to use as a stitching template on my computer and then printed it on a 12 x 12" sheet of paper. I placed the printed quote paper on top of a blank piece of 12 x 12" paper and used small strips of painters tape to secure it in place.
A lot of times the trouble with using templates is that they shift as you are piercing your holes and then you risk having a wonky design. I have found that painters tape is strong enough to secure the paper well and gentle enough not to tear your paper when you remove it carefully.
When it came to piercing the holes for the letters, I had a different approach for the different letter styles. The smaller, skinny letters, I pierced the holes in the center of the letter since the line of the letter is thin. The larger, fat letters, I pierced the holes along the outer edge of the letter to ensure that I had nice, straight lines. Trying to pierce the holes along the center of the large letters would have been more complicated because the line is so thick. (You can see where I pierced my holes in the pictures above.)
Next was picking out the colors of embroidery floss. In my excitement over getting to do so much stitching in one sitting, I kind of picked the colors on the fly without coordinating any of the supporting embellishments first. I decided I wanted to use one color on the word "MOM" and then use a mix of alternating colors on the smaller quote.
After all the stitching was done, I added one of my favorite photos of my mom and I to the center of the "O" in Mom.
Luckily, thanks to my ever-growing hoard of scrapbooking supplies, I found lots of coordinating embellishments to dress up the corners of the quote.
I'm so excited to give this to my Mom on Sunday! If you want to give hand-stitching a try, be sure to download the free template I used!
You can find it at Scrapbook Generation by clicking here.
