Cross Stitch Tutorial from Kitty City Creations

This week our blog will be focusing on needlecrafts. Today we are happy to bring you a wonderful tutorial from Aileen at KittyCityCreations.

Cross stitch tutorial: How to secure your thread to keep the back neat

Many of my friends comment on how neat the back of my stitching is. True, there is a bit of planning involved in my stitching “trail,” but much of it is how I secure my thread when I begin stitching. This may be non-traditional for many and some may feel that I am cheating. It is a sort of knot, which is a no-no in cross stitch! But it’s a nice flat knot, I assure you! (I’m such a rule breaker!) This was taught to me by a friend of my mother’s when I was a few years into my stitching habit.

Note: This only works if you are stitching with an even number of strands.

1. Start by cutting a piece of floss twice as long as you normally work with. I tend to cut mine about arm’s length.

2. If you are stitching with 2 strands (the most common), separate out only 1 strand of floss.Fold it in half and thread the open ends through the eye of your needle, leaving the loop on the end you will stitch with.

3. Bring the needle up through the back and make your first stitch as you normally would. Instead of leaving a “tail” to stitch over, bring your needle through the loop and pull taught. This creates the flat knot. (Images are of the back of the fabric.)

Note: Don’t pull too tight or you risk pulling the knot through to the front.

4. Continue stitching as usual and when you come to the end, thread the needle behind the last few stitches as you normally would. Be sure to clip the threads close to the fabric so you don’t leave thread hanging out. In the images, I started in the bottom left corner and ended in the top left corner.

So essentially the back looks the same as before, you just have fewer “beginning and ending” spots visible, which makes it look just a little cleaner.

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Fat Envelope Packaging Tutorial

Our focus this week is paper goods and Leisha of Paper Compositions has graciously shared a wonderful tutorial with us:

For whenever you need packaging of fatter items: card sets, business cards, etc. Note the different style of enclosures: the scalloped-edged one has velcro dots for resealing, the business card one has a slot and tab, and the envelope one has a self sealing strip for mailing. This tutoral is in a print-friendly jpeg format. Just double-click on the pics to enlarge, then read or print.