Make Your Hoops Prettier to Use as Frames

It’s popular to use embroidery hoops as frames for cross stitch projects, but a plain wooden hoop isn’t really that interesting as a way to present your hard work to the world.

Luckily it’s pretty easy to embellish an embroidery hoop to make it a little prettier to use as a frame.

Bobo Stitch has a couple of tutorials that will inspire you to make your hoops a little better.

First, you can paint your hoop to use it as a frame. I’ve done this before to make a wall storage pocket, which I guess I never blogged about, but you can find similar at East Coast Creative.

They say you should only do this for display purposes and not for a hoop that you plan to use for stitching because there’s a chance the paint could rub off on your project, which is probably a risk for finishbobostitch.co.uk/…/how-to-paint-an-embroidery-hooped projects, too, so you might not want to use this method on heirloom type projects or anything you might want to frame in a different size/shape of frame later on just in case.

You can also wrap your embroidery hoop in fabric, which is really cute and a fun way to reinforce the theme or colors of your project if you have fabric to match. This one only uses glue to attach the fabric to the hoop, but you might also want to use a bit of fabric Mod Podge on the fabric once it’s in place to keep it from fraying.

This one made me think maybe you could also decorate a hoop with washi tape, which would be more removable if you wanted to change the look.

Either way, if you want to make your embroidery hoop frames a little prettier, these are some great ideas. Have you ever used paint, fabric or something else to decorate a hoop? I’d love to hear about it.

[Photo: Bobo Stitch]

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

I recently wrote a post on my blog about using a stitchable journal cover and I mentioned that you can make your own stitched cover for a journal by using perforated paper instead of buying a stitchable notebook.

I have to admit, though, that I’ve never used perforated paper for cross stitch myself. I definitely want to because I think it would be great to use for bookmarks that don’t fray and have a little more stability, for example.

Sirious Stitches has us covered, though, because they did a deep dive into all things perforated cross stitch pattern that is worth the time to read through.

The post mentions that a lot of people use perforated paper for cross stitch because they buy an ornament kit that uses it. I’ve never seen these (or at least never noticed that that is what they were) but it’s a great idea to make small projects like ornaments in this way. It also talks about the pros and cons of using cross stitch paper, where to buy it and how to make your own.

Making it yourself is an awesome idea because if you already have a pattern in mind you can just make holes in your paper where you need stitches to be and leave the rest solid. This would be ideal for making greeting cards, for example.

In addition to kits and sheets you can often find the paper pre-cut into different shapes you can use to make your own designs, no real pattern required.

The post also includes tips and advice for how to stitch on perforated paper that you’ll want to check out before you try your first project.

I’m super intrigued by the idea of using perforated paper for cross stitch and will probably be trying it out soon. Have you used it before? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Check out the post over at Sirious Stitches for more information.

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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