Check Out This Great Method for Framing Cross Stitch

When you put all the time and energy you do into making a great cross stitch project, it’s worth taking the time to frame it in a way that will make it look its best.

Often for smaller designs we’ll choose to frame projects in a hoop, which is cute and a fine option, especially for seasonal projects you might want to change out through the year. Others will send their finished projects for professional framing, which is a great option for gifts and heirloom items that need to be preserved, but it can also be quite expensive.

Crewel Ghoul has a great tutorial for a way that you can easily frame your cross stitch projects at home with just a few supplies.

She uses adhesive mounting board (but you can use non-adhesive board if you have some one hand or you need a size that’s not available in an adhesive version) and a few other basic supplies to secure the sides and corners of the cross stitch fabric around the board before putting the design in the frame.

This requires a bit of hand sewing, but we’re cross stitchers so I’m sure we can handle that.

Framing your cross stitch like this gives it a little padding in the frame, which makes it look better than if it were just flat in a frame with no special finishing. It’s also a great idea to use a frame without glass or to leave the glass out of the frame so it doesn’t crush your stitches.

And though this is super secure it’s not 100 percent permanent if you decide you don’t want the project framed in that way any more. Or you can take it out of the frame and the edges are still all nicely finished so you can display it a different way without having to do anything else to it.

Check out the tutorial at Crewel Ghoul.

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul.]

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To Ways to Back a Hoop to Frame Cross Stitch

It’s back to school time where I live, which I always feel like is a great time to learn a new skill or take a deeper dive into something that you might not have learned a lot about before.

Usually when we are learning new hobbies we only know what we know. We learn the terms that we encounter, the skills that come up in the projects that we want to make. It’s not that we don’t care about other basics or different approaches, we just learn what we need to know to make what we want to make.

And that’s totally fine, but sometimes it’s a good idea to go back and review the basics or learn the things you might have missed the first time.

In that spirit I share this post from Caterpillar Cross Stitch all about basic cross stitch terms that every stitcher ought to know.

Did you know that the little bundle of thread you use for cross stitch is called a skein, for example? Or the difference between grid size and design area in a pattern? Or that working complete stitches one at a time is known as the English method? (I didn’t know that one! Apparently doing half of the stitch across the row and then coming back and finishing it is the Danish method. Who knew?)

There’s also a little bit about getting started with confidence that might be helpful at any skill level.

So what I’m saying is, even if you feel like you know a lot about cross stitch already, head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch and check out their list of terms and make sure you know them all. If nothing else you’ll feel a little smarter, either because you already knew them all or you learned something new!

And if you do learn something new, I’d love to hear about it.

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