Cross-Stitch

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How to Make Scissor Fobs

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One of the fun things about crafting is that there are a lot of accessories, and sometimes you can craft those accessories or craft things related to those accessories.

One good example of that is scissor fobs. This is definitely a non-essential accessory but it is also fun to give your scissors a little bling and make them easier to find on your crafting table. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost my little scissors after just putting them down, and I think having a scissor fob on one of the loops might help.

Sirious Stitches has a couple of posts about making your own scissor fobs, whether you want to make one with cross stitch or by beading.

The older post about cross stitch scissor fobs talks about reasons why you might want to use a scissor fob and how you can make one with a couple of small pieces of cross stitch. This is a great way to make your stitches super fancy or even to code your scissors so everyone else in your household will always know which scissors are the fabric scissors.

They recently posted a new post all about using beads to make scissor fobs, which is definitely a faster option than making a cross stitch tag. It goes through all the supplies you might need and has a step by step photo tutorial as well as a video showing how to make it. This is super helpful if you’ve never done any beading projects before. But you can also just thread some beads onto string and make a simpler version that the one shown.

Do you use scissor fobs? Did you make your own or buy them somewhere? And most importantly, do they help keep you from losing your scissors as much when they are right in front of you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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How to Stitch with Variegated Floss

I love the look of variegated cross stitch floss and how it makes it possible to stitch with a variety of colors without changing thread, giving your project more depth and a more complex look without you having to do anything different.

Or at least not much different. I recently came across this blog post from The Copper Fox all about how to use variegated floss and it noted that many people would say it’s a good idea to complete a whole stitch (when you’re stitching whole cross stitches) with the floss before going on to the next stitch. Most of us stitch row by row, but of course if you do that with variegated yarn, it could change color along the way and you’ll end up with stitches that are half one color and half another color or a different shade.

Of course that makes total sense but I’d never thought about it.

The post includes swatches with different kinds of variegated threads to show the different between working stitch by stitch or row by row, and it doesn’t make a huge different over the small area shown but I can see how it might make a difference if you had really long rows or if you just want to make sure your stitches are a single color whenever possible.

In addition to this experiment, the post talks about other ways to work with multicolored floss, including deliberately mixing the colors among the strands of floss you are stitching with and stitching in a different order instead of right to left and top to bottom (or whatever direction you typically work) to get different effects from the thread.

It’s fun to geek out on this stuff because it can make a difference if you want to play with it, or you can just stitch on without giving it much thought, and both will give you good results.

Check out all the experiments at The Copper Fox.

Do you do anything different when you stitch with variegated floss? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: The Copper Fox]