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

The designs from Bella Rose Craft look like they would be good for beginner cross stitchers and others who like relatively simple and small designs that are quick to finish for gifts or decor.

I’ll mention up front that this Etsy shop based in Indiana has no organization whatsoever. There are two categories: kits and patterns. So it’s a bit of a treasure hunt to find what you might be interested in.

As mentioned there are lots of minis and small looking projects with simple lines and minimal colors. There are holiday projects, animals, summer motifs like palm trees and beach umbrellas, a bathtub with a rubber duck, some text based designs (like hoppy spring and merry and bright), some biblical and religious designs, flowers, bunting and more.

On a site like this its difficult to pick something representative of the whole page, but I liked this bees and beehive design, so it’s the one I picked to share. This one illustrates a lot of my general points about the patterns from this shop. It’s small (2.79 by 2.57 inches, or about 7 by 6.5 cm on 14 count fabric), it looks like it’s all whole cross stitches and probably uses only six colors, and a couple of colors are only used for a handful of stitches.

Of the 300 plus cross stitch patterns available as of this writing, 140 are also available as cross stitch kits. These would be great to give as gifts if you’re trying to get someone interested in cross stitching. The kits include the pattern, fabric and floss, and you can choose to have it include a needle or not. The hoop is not included but the patterns explain what kind of hoop is shown if you want to get one to match.

So if you’re looking for cute, beginner friendly patterns for yourself or you’re trying to be a crafty enabler for someone else, check out Bella Rose Craft on Etsy.

[Photo: Bella Rose Craft]

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