©kimlizzy 2005

Open a new canvas 6x6"

Text/Insert Shaped Text/Circle Outline

You can use dashes, forward slash, back slash, underscore or various letters eg. V or W.

For this example I used the forward slash from Comic Sans MS

Just change the font via the toolbar until you have the look you like.

Change the colour if desired.

Important: Make sure you add a space at the end or your first and last stitch will be too close together. ie: slash space slash space slash space. I typed slash/space 45 times in this example.

Format/Resize Object to fit canvas/scale to fit.

Add your "holes": This is done on a separate transparent layer

Insert/shape/square/no line/no fill

Resize to fit your canvas

*Format/Resize object to fit canvas/Stretch to fit

On the Stack, left click on the transparent layer and keeping the mouse button down, drag this layer to the bottom.

Keeping this transparent layer selected, go to:

Effects/Paint Brush/Freehand

Change the colour to black. Click on Customize paint settings and select the solid circle shape and adjust brush size to suit.

Zoom in on your work and stamp each end of each stitch, placing the centre of the crosshair at the edge of the stitch.

When you have finished and returned to the workspace you will notice the "holes" layer is off-centre.

Centre it by going to Format/Centre Object on canvas

At this point you can copy each layer separately and paste onto a new canvas and "save as" holes.png and stitches.png. You will be able to use these files as templates and simply change the colour of the stitches to suit your needs.

Add a shadow to the stitch layer if desired.

You’re Done!