Printables to Get Your Cross Stitch Life Organized

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]

The cross stitcher behind the blog Sirious Stitches is quite into biscornu.

If you’re not, a quick primer: biscornu are three-dimensional cross-stitched objects with eight points, often with an indention in the middle that makes them look a bit like doughnuts without the hole. They can be just about any size and subject you can think of. They’re often used as pincushions but can also be seasonal decor or just decoration for any time of year.

I’ve got a collection of biscornu cross stitch patterns here.

Once you’ve stitched one or several (they are a little addicting) you might wonder what you can add to them to make them even more extra.

It very much depends on the design of your biscornu and the look you are going for, but Sirious Stitches has a great post all about some of the options you might consider.

I don’t want to give you the whole list because you need to go visit and see all of their great biscornu they’ve stitched, but one really easy thing that you can do with a lot of designs is take advantage of that center indent by adding a button, beads, silk flower or another embellishment.

This is great to do just with a basic button from your stash that coordinates with the design and colors of the cross stitching, but it’s extra fun if you have a button that’s on theme, such as a leaf for a fall biscornu or a flower shaped button for a floral design. Add a jingle bell to a Christmas pattern, or a charm if you don’t have a button that coordinates.

Just this one idea is sure to get you thinking about ways to embellish biscornu (not to mention other cross stitch projects) but head over to Sirious Stitches to see all of their ideas for embellishing biscornu to make these already fun projects even more fun.

Have you ever made biscornu? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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