Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

Printables to Get Your Cross Stitch Life Organized

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I think a lot of crafters this time of year are thinking about ways to get more organized, whether it’s decluttering craft supplies, organizing materials or doing a better job of keeping track of and/or finishing projects.

If you’re interested in some of these things for cross stitch, I’ve got a few printables to help you get started.

Stitch All The Things has made a free printable cross stitch journal to help you organize your stitching life. This includes pages for tracking projects (name, designer, start and finish dates, what size fabric you used and other notes); keeping track of your number of WIPs through the year; a more detailed project list that includes things like colors, plans for the finished object and what needleminder and project bag you used (which I guess could be good if you don’t finish the project so you can find it again?); pattern and kit inventories; stitchalong trackers; a stitchminder inventory (you could change the header on this one to make it a floss inventory if you’d rather); project shopping list; fabric inventory and more.

The pages can be downloaded from their website as an Excel document you can edit, or as a Google Drive document or a PDF. Some of the pages initially had years on them but that has been removed so you can use them whenever you want, and for as long as you want.

Creatively Crafting has a free cross stitch progress printable you can get by signing up for email notifications about their membership program. I did this one and you have to click through a couple of pages to join the waitlist, then confirm your subscription and the planner page comes in a separate email. It has spaces for listing the project, a floss list, what kind of fabric you’re using, the number of stitches, any notes and a place to track your progress.

[Cross stitch image by Alicja from Pixabay]

Have you read?

How to Add Text to a Cross Stitch Project

One of the easiest ways to make a cross stitch project more personal is to add text to it. Whether you’re adding the names of people getting married to a generic floral cross stitch design, birth information to a project on theme with the new baby’s room or just adding a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you, adding words to cross stitch projects make them that much more special. 

But if you’re not working with a project that already has text built in, or you want to change the text that’s there, that can feel a little daunting. 

Caterpillar Cross Stitch has a great guide to adding names and words (as well as numbers) to projects, which talks you through what to consider and how to actually go about adding text to a cross stitch project successfully. 

You’ll need to think about what kind of font you want to use and if you’re using back stitched letters or larger filled letters, how much space you need and how the letters work together in the text you’re planning to make sure it’s readable. 

Their post includes common pitfalls such as running out a space or ending up with text that’s off center and how to avoid them (spoiler: chart out your text before you stitch!). 

The whole post is really helpful if you’ve never added lettering to a project before and don’t know where to start. I like to use block letters in back stitch when learning how to add text to cross stitch, but of course there are tons of lettering options. Check out this collection of cross stitch fonts if you want to see some different things you can try. 

And head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch to get more tips for how to successfully add lettering to your cross stitch projects. They also have their own alphabet and number charts you can buy to add text to your stitching. 

Have you ever added text to a cross stitch project? I’d love to hear how it went!

[Photo: Caterpillar Cross Stitch]