Well, here we are with the 4^th installment in my series about creating your own stitches. I do hope this has been a worthwhile series for you.

My Grandmother always said that for every stitch you sew on Sunday you will have to take out seven with your nose in Heaven. I never really understood that last part. But I know that came from the days when sewing was work and not for pleasure. And I’m glad my stitching tips have all been on Tuesdays. We shouldn’t have to worry about how many stitches we take today 😉

Last week’s post was all about stitching around a shape. This week I’m going to talk about stitching on a selection. I know at first this may sound a bit redundant since I’ve already used this option working with shapes. You have to be thinking this can’t be that much different than how I’ve shown Text on Shape. But it is different. I’ll show you how.

Text on Selection

Using the Text on Selection tool to create stitching is not the same as the technique I’ve shown you before. But it can be a lot of fun because you can make a selection around just about anything in your layout to then stitch around.

A quick reminder…I use the current version of Photoshop Elements (PSE – 2024). Some of my screen shots may look different than what you see on your screen depending on the version you are using.

This time I’m going to use this cute picture of a dog from Pixabay:

I pull this photo into my file and position it at the bottom of my page:

That positioning will make sense later.

With the dog layer active I select the Text on Selection tool:

The settings here are the same as what I used on the green pocket shape from last week’s post. I am going to change at least the font to 1000 Wishes Origami (available at DaFont) and the Color to a rusty brown (#a5431b). And just as last week…I’m not fooling with the offset setting.

I can now just position my cursor somewhere near the bottom of the dog’s ear on the left side of the photo and begin to “draw” my selection:

I really only care about the top part of the dog but I can go ahead and select the whole dog:

I click the check-mark to confirm the selection. Now I just position the cursor over the dog again at the bottom of the its ear and click where I want to start the stitching. Just as what happened with Text on Shape, the cursor icon changes to depict text mode (the I-Beam). At this point the “text” options now change just as they did last week so I can set the Size & Tracking:

The font & color are what I selected just a second ago. But the Size & Tracking are set to what I used on the green pocket shape last week. The justification is currently set to what I used when I was playing around with actual text prior to this post. I’m going to leave the Size & Tracking values as they are for now. But I am going to set the justification to “Left align text”.

With all those settings in place I can once again just start typing my stitches. This time I’m going to use the plus sign (+) character for something different:

As you can see, the stitches are a bit wonky. Now’s the time to try and fix that. I’m going to adjust the tracking a little at a time until it looks better. When it was all said and done, I ended up with a Tracking value of 230. I needed to add just a few more stitches after that adjustment. I clicked the check-mark to confirm the “text” and here’s how it looks:

I’ll add a style later. But first I want to show you a little silly thing I can do still using Text on Selection. I thought it would be fun to add a little “caption” above the stitching that follows the same shape.

So, I repeat that same process changing some of the settings (including the color – now a medium blue #2e3192) and here’s what happens:

That certainly doesn’t look very nice. But it’s so easy to fix. With that new text layer active, all I have to do is move the text up above the stitching and voila:

Again, I can zhuzh that font up with a style later. One last thing. I want to get rid of the white background.

While you might be thinking I could do that with the selection made using the Text on Selection tool. Sadly, that would make things too easy and PSE just can’t have that 😉

All kidding aside…as nice as that would be I can see why PSE won’t let that happen It could get very complicated from a technical perspective. But I still have my handy “normal” selection tools. If you aren’t sure how to use those, please check my prior post about making good selections.

Before I start to make my selection, I want to hide the stitching & the caption. If I don’t do that making a clean selection without getting those in the mix could be tricky.

Then using a combination of the Magic Wand & Selection Brush tools, I get the cute dog selected:

Next, I go to the top tool bar and click Select->Inverse ( or Shift+Ctrl+I) and press the Delete key. Now with that white background gone, I clear the selection and unhide the stitching & caption:

Now it’s all set to add a much nicer background and turn it into a funny layout that my grandkids will enjoy. But I’ll do that later.

I hope you’ll have a bit of fun playing around with adding some stitching or text to an existing photo or other image.

Extra Tips On Creating Stitches

In the past 3 posts I’ve given you so many extra tips about creating stitches it almost seems I may have covered everything. But there might be some tips worth repeating.

Keep in mind that changing font size, justification and tracking can help you get “proper” spacing around irregular selections.

I know I’ve said this repeatedly but it really does bear repeating…be mindful of the font you use. Brush, script, large “display” or very decorative fonts likely aren’t going to work very well for stitches.

And there is one thing I’m not 100% certain I’ve mentioned before now. In addition to adjusting the font size & justification, sometimes it helps to add some extra spacing to get the stitches to “spread out” a bit more evenly. Try doing this at the beginning of your “text” to see if it helps space the stitches out so they aren’t “stepping” on each other. You can also try adding a space between stitches to go around “tricky” parts of your image. And both of those options can apply to any text you may use as well.

As usual, if you have any questions or want to make a suggestion about a topic you’d like me to cover, please don’t ever hesitate to “Message Me”.

Thanks for reading this week’s Tuesday Tip. Watch for my next post about creating a unique element using some of the tips you’ve already read over these last several weeks. If you want to stay informed about new posts, just click “Follow Me” to stay in touch. I hope you have a wonderful week!