Are Thread Bundles Worth the Money

I recently came across a post from Lord Libidan talking about embroidery floss packs and whether it’s worth the money to buy a set of threads all at once instead of one skein at a time.

With the closure of Joann some people were buying these bundles as a way to build their stash/stockpile if they didn’t have another place to buy locally. I did the same thing when I first started cross stitching again after a break of many years, because I wanted to get a bunch of colors all at once without the overwhelming job of picking colors from the wall of thread when I didn’t have a particular project in mind.

And I think for this purpose buying a package with colors you like or some basic/popular colors is probably a good idea and relatively cost effective.

My Joann didn’t have any floss packs when it was closing (in fact it didn’t have cross stitch floss at all for a month or more, then suddenly go a bunch about a week before closing) but I might have bought one just to have the variety if they had been available.

If Amazon is going to be your source for cross stitch supplies going forward, I think buying packs of cross stitch floss when the colors make sense is definitely going to be a better deal. As I write this a pack of 36 popular colors was running $39.50, or about $1.09 a skein. I used to pay 66 cents per skein at Joann, but buying a single skein of black floss on Amazon would run you $4.29.

Herrschners sells DMC floss for $1.05 per skein or less, but shipping isn’t free and you’ll have to buy a lot (or a lot of other things, too) to meet their minimums for free shipping when they offer it.

Check out the post on Lord Libidan for his thoughts and let me know where you are buying cross stitch floss now if you used to buy it at Joann.

[Photo via Herrschners]

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How to Railroad Your Cross Stitch

To celebrate back to school season, I wanted to make a fun and useful cross stitch pattern, so I decided on this cross stitch pencil bookmark.

It’s a really easy pattern even though it calls for six colors. You definitely don’t have to use all the colors if you don’t want to, and you can use different colors to make a colored pencil instead of the traditional yellow one.

These sorts of projects always end up taking longer than I imagined they would in my head, because I just don’t stop to do the math of exactly how many stitches are in a piece that’s 23 stitches by 74 rows (1,702, though not every single one of them is covered, most of them are).

But because the coloring of the chart is so straightforward, I’d say it also doesn’t take as long as 1,700 stitches sounds, if that makes sense. Because you barely have to count anything and could make most of it without consulting the chart, you can get into a groove pretty easily and stitch whole sections in a single sitting. I had a lot of fun stitching this one and I think you will, too.

Once the stitching is done, take a piece of felt and sew it to the back to hide the mess you’ve made and make it a nice smooth bookmark that’s easy to use in whatever book you might be reading.

This is a fun one to make for yourself or a kid in your life who is going back to school. But it would also be a fun teacher appreciation gift or holiday gift, especially for an English teacher but really anyone would like this one I think.

You can grab the free chart and get all the instructions for assembling your own cross stitch pencil bookmark over at Our Daily Craft.

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