Long ago when I was in 4-H, the club made a quilt for our leader when she was having a baby. It was made of green and white blocks and some of the white blocks had four-leaf clovers cross stitched on them.
That’s the one and only time I remember using waste canvas to cross stitch on fabric, but I think about it a lot when I consider stitching on other fabrics that don’t have built in blocks.
Using waste canvas allows you to superimpose a grid onto fabric so you can follow a cross stitch pattern and stitch on the fabric, then remove the waste fabric, leaving just the original fabric and the stitching behind.
It’s relatively easy to use, but it’s great to have a tutorial and some tips to work from the first time you do it. I think we were just winging it honestly but it turned out fine in the end.
There’s a great post with lots of photos over at Koekoek that shows you how to set yourself up for waste canvas stitching success, how to actually do the stitching and how to remove the waste canvas. They call that part fun but I don’t agree as far as I can remember. I think the tediousness of pulling out the waste canvas threads is a big part of what has kept me from getting more and using it in different projects.
I’d love to add a bit of cross stitch to some clothing, or to a piece of fabric to then sew into a pillow or another project. (They show a pillow in the blog post, but you could also do this to make cloth napkins, a tablecloth or any number of other projects.) Maybe reading all about it will motivate me to give it another try!
Have you ever worked with waste canvas? I’d love to know how it went.
[Photo: Koekoek]
