How to Finish off Thread on a Cross Stitch Project

I’m usually not all that interested in making the back of my cross stitch projects very clean. I know it’s a nice thing to do, but I tie knots in my threads when I start stitching, and sometimes I’ll tie a knot at the end, too.

There are times when you might want to have a neater back to your work, or if you’re just the kind of person who likes to have a clean back even if it isn’t going to show, you might want a method other than tying knots to finish off your thread on a cross stitch project to make it nice and smooth.

Caterpillar Cross Stitch has a great video all about different ways to finish your cross stitch thread that will make your back clean and your stitches secure.

When I’m not tying knots I generally will weave in my ends on the back of the work, but did you know you can also weave in ends with the front of the work facing you? This is super helpful if you’re working on a big project in a frame or stand that can’t easily be flipped over to see the back of the work.

That’s one of the methods she talks about, but she also talks about parking thread so you can stitch over it later, the loop method and the pin stitch method (which is super clever and could be used at the beginning of a thread section as well as the end).

I don’t know that I’ll adopt any of these methods for my own projects since weaving works just fine for my purposes, but I’d love to know if you have used any of these methods and how they work for you. Are you team clean back or do you care as little as I do? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Check out the video from Caterpillar Cross Stitch on YouTube.

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]

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How to Railroad Your Cross Stitch

If you love patterns for frogs and sardines, animals, food, flowers and more, Happy Cross Stitchers has got you covered. With more than 1,600 patterns as of this writing, you’re almost guaranteed to find something you like.

I don’t know if I’ve missed something that cross stitch patterns featuring sardines are showing up everywhere (this is the second designer I’ve seen with them in the past month or so) but Happy Cross Stitchers has 60 sardine cross stitch patterns. They also have 200 patterns with flowers, and even more than that in their biggest category, which is animals.

Many of the animal cross stitch patterns have a modern nursery feel to them, like this set of four modern boho animal patterns featuring what I’m interpreting as owls, a moose (or it coulr be a deer), a donkey and a cow. Each individual pattern is 100 by 100 stitches and they use six or seven colors. The designs will come out to 7.1 inches or 18.14 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric.

There’s also a large number of Christmas cross stitch patterns, with lots of trees, little houses, Santas and word art. There are lots of bunnies, eggs and chicks in the Easter section.

The modern designs include lots of colorful, graphic florals. There are also well over 100 butterflies, many of which at least look like they could be inspired by real butterflies (though none of them are labeled as to what kind of butterfly they are).

You’ll also find plenty of cute and often funny cat and dog cross stitch patterns, though there are a lot more cats than dogs represented. And then there’s the food section, with patterns for fruits, different kinds of toast, a jar of pickles, doughnuts and more.

And that’s not even all there is in this store! I guess all this is a long way of saying there’s a lot of fun patterns at www.etsy.com/shop/HappyCrossStitchers on Etsy and you should go browse because you’ll probably find something you like. And if you do, I’d like to hear about it!

[Photo: Happy Cross Stitchers]

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