Texturing of Stitches

Hey All,

I need assistance on how to create realistic stitches for organic models like sofa's and cushions, more so the texture side of things.

I can model the sofa and cushions. I've modeled stitches, which I've cloned along a spline in an effort to create a normal map i.e. baking a high poly to low poly. The normal map is not great but I'm tweaking settings to experiment for the best results I can get. I'm okay with the result for now.


My issue now is how do I go about painting or texturing the stitches to coincide with the normal map stitches I created?
I can of course make 900 strokes with a brush over each, but surely there's an easy way to do this. I've tried the stitch brush in SP, but honestly, with my skill level, it's a mediocre result and since I've gone to the trouble of modeling the stitches for a half decent normal map, I'd prefer to explore that option for better results.

I was thinking along the lines of whether there is some way to get a decent Alpha Map of the stitches I modeled, that I could then use in SP, but this is where I'm at my wits-end at present.

PS: I'm trying to keep the poly count as low as possible. Let's say 'mid poly count level'.

How do you guys go about this?

Appreciate any help.