The following tutorial is written for Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Illustrator CS2 on the Windows operating system. However, most of this will apply to other operating systems and similar programs (more about this in step 1). This tutorial is set up for beginners. So if you’ve never used Illustrator before, don’t be afraid.

1. Open Illustrator. This first section is done in Illustrator, then later we take what we make here and import it into Photoshop. This first section can also very easily be done in Macromedia Flash 6 and up or older versions of Illustrator. Depending on the shape you create, a 3-D program could be used with relative ease (Rhino, AutoCAD, Maya, 3DS Max…). You can even do this project entirely in Photoshop using the path tool and some advanced techniques, but to make this as simple a tutorial as possible we’ll be using Illustrator. Once it’s open, create a new document (Ctrl+N).

2. Make your design. What ever you want to have a stitched look. Be it just a simple straight line or zig-zag, or basic shapes like circles, stars, or hearts. Anything you can draw up in Illustrator can be used. You can even use type, just try to keep the shape you use from getting too complex. For the purposes of this example I’ll be using a hand drawn heart shape, created with the pen tool (P).

3. Add a stroke. If you’re new to Illustrator, a stroke is the border that goes around the outside of the shape, where as the fill is the color that fills up the inside of a shape. Once you have your shape, turn the fill color off and turn the stroke on. This can easily be done by selecting your shape with the selection tool (V), then changing your selected shapes appearance using the bottom part of the Tools pannel (found under Window > Tools). To start editing the stroke, open the stroke window (CTRL+F10). Depending on the size of your shape, the numbers I have in my stroke window can be quite different from yours. The important thing is to have it’s cap and join both set to round (middle option of the three for both settings). The dashed line is what turns your stroke into a stitched thread, so make sure to have it checked. You’ll just need to play around with the settings of the stroke here to see how it affects your shape. Changing the numbers of the dashes, gaps, and weight until you find the right look for your project.

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