Using Embroidery to Enhance Your Scrapbook Pages

Do you know that you can easily stitch embroidery and other similar threads onto paper? Yes, you absolutely can! Adding embroidery to your paper crafts and scrapbooking pages gives them a new dimension and unique look. Embroidering on your scrapbook pages also allows you to easily add elements to your pages while you are adding the stitchery itself.

You can embroider on paper both by hand and with your sewing machine. While each technique is different, they are both fairly easy to learn to do well. Let’s look at each method:

Hand Sewing and Embroidery on Paper

To stitch on paper you will need some heavy weight paper, a pin to make holes in the paper, a needle, threads, a design to stitch, and scissors.

Using a pencil lightly draw your chosen design on a piece of cardstock. You can use other forms of paper but you need to work with heavier papers and lighter papers tend to tear and become misshapen during sewing. If you do not want to draw on your project itself, you can draw your design on a piece of tracing paper and then tape it onto your project to use as a guide while you punch your holes.

If you are looking for a design to use, you can find them everywhere. You can look online, in books, use your rubber stamps and even use your children’s color book pages.
The one thing that is important about your design is that you keep it fairly simple. Do not try to stitch a complicated design until you have some experience embroidering on paper.

Place your paper on your mouse pad or some other fabric item with some “give” to it. Start at one side of your design and work your way around it punching holes about every 1/8th of an inch with your pin. Once you have your holes then you need to erase any pencil marks still on your paper.

Now comes the fun part – you get to stitch your design. Stitch your design using whatever stitch and colors you want to use. When you are finished you can fill in areas by using colored pencils or markers.

Machine Sewing and Embroidery on Paper

If you can sew on fabric with your sewing machine, then you can sew on paper. The techniques are basically the same with a couple important adjustments.

Before you start to stitch on your paper with your sewing machine you will need to ensure that your bobbin contains enough thread to complete your design. Why? Because, if your bobbin runs out of thread then your project will have holes in it without threads going through them.

Generally when you machine sew you knot the thread ends. On paper you will want to use a dab of glue or a small amount of clear tape to adhere your threads on the back of your work.

Sewing and embroidering on paper is a really fun and easy way to add another dimension to your paper craft projects. You can use any type of paper and threads or fibers to get just the look that you want. You can sew papers together or simply embroider to embellish. The options are only as limited as your own imagination is.