Geek Lab -For the Love of Hand Stitching!

June 30, 2016 by Melissa Vining 8 Comments

Hello creative friends!  It’s Melissa back with you again and today I’m going to share my latest scrappy love!  Before I discovered scrapbooking I was a keen cross stitcher, with projects on the go since I was 14!  What a delight to discover I could combine the two, and my Silhouette Cameo has made the process so much easier and fun!

I recently purchased the Silhouette Pen Attachment (containing three different sized attachments), which enables any type of pen or pencil to be used with the sketch function.  It means I can now draw cut file designs and then hand stitch them.

I decided to create a layout with one of gorgeous exclusive cut files from this month’s Raskog kit.  As soon I saw this one I knew I had to stitch it!

I rotated it to the right, and then sketched it with a pen.

Once it was sketched I left my mat in my Silhouette and then opened another copy of the cut file so I could reduce the size of the three circular shapes.  Then I cut them out on my Silhouette to provide frames.  In hindsight I wouldn’t have made the frames so large.

The next step was to use my paper pierce to create hundreds of holes for my stitching.

Then came the fun but long process of stitching.  I used colours that were complimentary to the Life Noted collection.  Whilst you can see the black of my pen, its not obvious when you look at the layout in real life.

And here is the completed layout, which although it appears clean and simple and quick was a labour of love with all the stitching.  As a busy mum of three I did the stitching in small increments, and I left it on my dining room table so I could come back to it throughout the day.

I embellished with like colours to each of the three circles.  I love the exclusive flair in this beautiful kit!

The Pink Fresh Studio rubber charms had perfect sentiments for my photos.

Love those yellow alpha from the collection too!  I also added a flower that I made with a Sizzix die and my Big Shot Plus.  I added extra embellishments from the Pink Fresh Studio “Felicity” collection that I purchased from the CK store here.

If you haven’t tried the sketch function of your Silhouette you really should, and I highly recommend you purchase the Pen Attachment!

Have a lovely week!