Seasoned Cross Stitchers: What Do You Wish You Knew Starting Out?

I love to hear about crafts from the perspective of people who’ve been at it for a while, because they often learn things they wish they knew when they were first learning how to do that particular craft that are useful for newbies (and those with more experience) to think about or try for themselves.

In this case we’ve got a post/podcast episode from Hannah Hand Makes about seven things she wishes she knew before she started cross stitching. It’s worth a read for the full list because there are definitely things on there I haven’t considered or tried before (not that I’m all that seasoned when it comes to cross stitching, but still).

One that I do want to make special note of is that she says she wishes she knew big projects aren’t as frustrating as she thought they would be.

She says that she never thought she had the patience for big projects and that she would get bored before they were done, but it helps her to have some smaller projects on the go at the same time so she doesn’t have to work a big project straight through.

That’s good advice. I generally am only working one cross stitch project at a time and I know that I do get bored and set it aside, even when it’s not that big of a project!

Another one that probably goes hand in hand with stitching larger projects is realizing there are lots of different ways to finish cross stitch projects rather than just putting them all in hoops to display. Hoops are really cute (and I actually just wrote about a couple of ways to finish hoops for framing cross stitch) but you can use regular frames, turn your projects into pillows and lots of other things depending on the size of the finished project.

Check out all her thoughts at Hannah Hand Makes. I’d love to hear what you wish you knew when you were newer to stitching than you are now!

[Photo: Hannah Hand Makes]

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Cross-Stich For Stress Relief - Unwinding And…

It’s back to school time where I live, which I always feel like is a great time to learn a new skill or take a deeper dive into something that you might not have learned a lot about before.

Usually when we are learning new hobbies we only know what we know. We learn the terms that we encounter, the skills that come up in the projects that we want to make. It’s not that we don’t care about other basics or different approaches, we just learn what we need to know to make what we want to make.

And that’s totally fine, but sometimes it’s a good idea to go back and review the basics or learn the things you might have missed the first time.

In that spirit I share this post from Caterpillar Cross Stitch all about basic cross stitch terms that every stitcher ought to know.

Did you know that the little bundle of thread you use for cross stitch is called a skein, for example? Or the difference between grid size and design area in a pattern? Or that working complete stitches one at a time is known as the English method? (I didn’t know that one! Apparently doing half of the stitch across the row and then coming back and finishing it is the Danish method. Who knew?)

There’s also a little bit about getting started with confidence that might be helpful at any skill level.

So what I’m saying is, even if you feel like you know a lot about cross stitch already, head over to Caterpillar Cross Stitch and check out their list of terms and make sure you know them all. If nothing else you’ll feel a little smarter, either because you already knew them all or you learned something new!

And if you do learn something new, I’d love to hear about it.

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