The Best Way to Store Embroidery Floss

I am going to be honest with you and admit that my storage methods for my cross stitching supplies leave a lot to be desired.

As in, all of my floss, along with some bits of cross stitch fabric (maybe some actual fabric?), random hoops, some wooden beads for some reason, are all thrown into a zip-top plastic bag that a set of sheets came in. I think it started as a bag just for cross stitch stuff but it has not stayed that way and even though it’s small, it’s still kind of overwhelming to straighten out.

Actually, I have made a bit of progress on organizing my floss recently, because I was starting on a big project and I needed to see what floss I had that I could use before I bought more. So most of my solids are now separated from the variegated colors, but there’s still a whole lot of mess in there.

So to inspire me as much as to educate you, today we’re going to read if not heed the advice of Amanda, aka Crewel Ghoul, who it will probably not shock you to learn suggests using plastic bobbins to store embroidery floss.

This way your floss doesn’t get tangled, you can see what you have, you can even put it in number order if you’re feeling like an organizing superhero.

What I love about this post, though, is that it explains how to actually go about using plastic bobbins, as in how to load the floss on the bobbin without making a giant mess, how to label them and how to store them once they’re all sorted out.

This is long-term goals for me if I keep doing more big cross stitch projects. And the more I do it, the more I enjoy it, so that’s a real possibility.

Check out all the tips at Crewel Ghoul.

How do you store your embroidery floss? Make me feel better or jealous in the comments!

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]

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]

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