Cross-Stitch Basics: How to Clean Cross Stitch

Despite our best efforts while we are working on a project, our cross-stitched objects sometimes get a little dirty.

Prevention can help a lot: always wash your hands before you stitch, don’t eat and stitch (or drink colored/sugary liquids), store your project out of reach of childrens/pets/other people who might accidentally get it dirty while you’re working on it.

But washing a cross-stitch project before you finish and frame it is a good idea even if there aren’t visible stains on it.

If you’re familiar with hand washing laundry, it’s a pretty simple process, outlined in a little more detail at Tiny Modernist. Use dish soap or your favorite wool wash/hand wash detergent and lukewarm water.

Allow the piece to soak for about 15 if there are no visible stains that need to be treated. Drain the water, then gently rinse (or fill the sink with clear water and put the project back in to rinse off the remaining soap), press between two towels to get most of the water out, then lie flat on a towel to dry the rest of the way.

What if you do have stains? Check out the tips on About.com Laundry for a good process for dealing with stains and cleaning vintage cross-stitch projects.

Do you wash your cross-stitch projects? I’d love to know how you do it.

[Photo by Raquel Philips, via Flickr.]

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How to Wash Cross Stitch Projects

I have a complicated relationship with my embroidery needles. Which is a fancy way of saying I don’t really take care of my needles at all. Even though I know I have embroidery needles to use for cross stitch and sewing, needles that are certainly still in their packages, I can rarely find them when I need them.

So when I saw this post from Crewel Ghoul about how to store your embroidery needles, it hit close to home for me.

It doesn’t really say anything I didn’t already know, but it is good advice that might also serve as a reminder for you to take better care of your needles when you cross stitch or do other hand-sewing projects so that you’ll be able to find your needles again when you need them.

It would help me a lot if I had a dedicated place to keep needles I’m not using, including the needles that are still in their packages from when I bought them. You’d think I would keep them with my embroidery floss but apparently you would be mistaken about that.

Another good idea for me is to have a place to put needles I’ve been using when I am done with them. Because goodness knows I’m not going to put them back in the package. (Which may actually be a good thing because then I know which one I’ve been using and which ones are fresh. Not that I replace my needles regularly, but still.) I own pincushions but I don’t really use them for anything, which is silly.

Check out the post at Crewel Ghoul to see all the options available for storing your embroidery needles properly. I’d love to hear what you do, especially if you have a better system than I do (which, honestly, would be any system at all).

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]

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