Recently restocked at Scrapbooks Plus are the stitching templates, needles, paper piercers, piercing mats, and colored floss from the Bazzill Stitch'z line. And I've been taking many customers back to the Design Team display board to show them how I used the large flower stitching template on my two-page layout this month. So I thought I would share this technique here, too.
For these two pages, I chose the plain green and yellow reverse sides of two American Crafts "Spring and Summer Collection" papers from our August Design Team kit and cut them into larger and narrower strips to alternate across the width of the layout. I wanted a late summer feel to the colors so I could use a few of my butterfly photos, since I enjoy their company so much in my garden. For my photo mat, I offset a 9" x 12" portion of the scalloped green-and-white swirl paper, adding a scalloped edge to the cut side. With leftover strips of the green swirl paper, I added a few more scalloped edges to soften the straight cuts. The strip of deep pink dotted fabric helps to settle the eye and connect the other pinks.
In the negative space left over on the right page of the layout, I continued the idea of the swirly "butterfly path" lines by using the Bazzill Stitch'z template to outline part of the flower design. The templates make this technique very simple. You place your paper on a piercing mat, then position your template over the section of paper you wish to pierce, and follow the already-punched holes in the template to pierce your paper holes. You can use as much or little of the template as you choose. Here I used a third of the three-flower design, but you could use only one flower outline, or any other part. And there are many other template designs to choose from.
With embroidery floss (there are 7 colors in the store, available by the yard or the whole roll), you sew a running backstitch to complete the design. That means you 1) bring your threaded floss needle up in one hole, 2) take a stitch back and down through the preceding hole, 3) run your thread under the paper forward again for two holes and 4) bring your needle up in the next clear hole from where you came up before. Then backstitch again down through the preceding hole, run forward under two holes, and come up in the next clear hole. You won't want to make your thread too long because it tends to knot up on itself or get caught on the corners of your layout. To change threads, just leave a tail of thread on the underside of your paper and anchor it under several backstitches; don't knot it. Needleworkers will tell you to let your thread dangle every once in a while to stretch out its kinks.
To finish the layout, I used the little "sunshine" stamp, a couple ribbon loops for horizontal effect, some silk flowers, photo corners, and butterflies cut with Martha Stewart punches. The big green swirls are from a Sizzix die.
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