Cross-Stitch

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Sign Up for 2012 TUSAL – Totally Useless Stitch-a-long

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As I wandered around stitchy blogs I kept running into a mysterious term – TUSAL – and I wondered what in the world it meant. Until I found Daffycat’s blog and unearthed the meaning of the term. TUSAL stands for Totally Useless Stitch-a-long. Read on to learn more.

If you would like to join the TUSAL for 2012 leave a comment on this post at It’s a Daffycat. The rules are simple:

1. Get a glass container and save your thread clippings or ORTs (Old Ratty Threads!) Some stitchers include fabric trimmings, thread bands or any other stitching cast-offs they gather. You may continue filling this jar throughout the year OR you may empty the jar and start over each month ~ no firm rules here!

2. On (or about) each New Moon take a picture of the ORTs in your jar and post it to your blog. This is a blog game so YES, you MUST have a blog to be included.

3. Yes, you can use your current ORT jar or jars.

Read More About the TUSAL

Comments

  1. Too funny! I’ve been doing that for awhile and just dumped my useless thread. Just started another one a few weeks ago! 🙂

  2. I saw this at the beginning of 2011 and started a jar but never posted pictures. I’m happy to report my jar is almost full and I will empty it on Dec. 31 to start again. I’m saving the threa for the birds in the spring, they can make pretty nests.

  3. Did you know that you can take those threads, sandwich them between two layers of watersoluble interfacing, quilt like crazy on your machine, dissolve the layers, and have a pretty neat, original piece of fabric to play with?

Have you read?

Cross Stitch a Job and Get a Jump on Holiday Crafting

I was recently doing a scroll through some crafting websites that I follow and I came across this amazing collection of cross stitch job patterns from Koekoek. It includes more than 100 different jobs, sports and hobbies, and these would be so much fun to personalize and stitch up for friends, family and co-workers. 

You’ll find everything from occupations like doctor, fireman, maternity nurse, tax lawyer and librarian to sports like swimming, fishing and beach volleyball. 

There’s  pattern for watching marathon amounts of Netflix, doing triathlons (basically the same thing, right?), teaching geography, graphic design and catching Pokemon. Among many others. 

The designs are categorized by medical professions, office jobs, stitch a sport (which includes other hobbies) and education professions, or you can just scroll through all the patterns to see the variety. Check out all the designs on their website, or scroll down on this page to see them in categories and with more details. 

They suggest working these with a five inch hoop using 14 count cross stitch fabric or 28 count evenweave stitched over two threads for a fancier look. The number of colors needed for each design varies, but they are pretty small projects so there’s generally not a ton of detail. 

The patterns also include text for what the image is showing like “the knitter” or “the veterinarian,” but they also have a post about how to personalize the designs with different text such as the person’s name, a date or a quote. There’s also a full bask stitch alphabet included in the post so you can chart out your own text. 

And while the designs show specific people, you can change up details like hair color, clothing color and eye color if you want to make it look more like the person you intend to give it to. You can also purchase custom cross stitch kits from them to make the project exactly the way you want it without having to do the work yourself. 

I think this is such a fun idea for a graduation gift or a holiday gift. If you check it out I’d love to know which characters you are stitching!

[Photo: Koekoek]