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]

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How and Why to Cross Stitch on Plastic Canvas

I love the look of variegated cross stitch floss and how it makes it possible to stitch with a variety of colors without changing thread, giving your project more depth and a more complex look without you having to do anything different.

Or at least not much different. I recently came across this blog post from The Copper Fox all about how to use variegated floss and it noted that many people would say it’s a good idea to complete a whole stitch (when you’re stitching whole cross stitches) with the floss before going on to the next stitch. Most of us stitch row by row, but of course if you do that with variegated yarn, it could change color along the way and you’ll end up with stitches that are half one color and half another color or a different shade.

Of course that makes total sense but I’d never thought about it.

The post includes swatches with different kinds of variegated threads to show the different between working stitch by stitch or row by row, and it doesn’t make a huge different over the small area shown but I can see how it might make a difference if you had really long rows or if you just want to make sure your stitches are a single color whenever possible.

In addition to this experiment, the post talks about other ways to work with multicolored floss, including deliberately mixing the colors among the strands of floss you are stitching with and stitching in a different order instead of right to left and top to bottom (or whatever direction you typically work) to get different effects from the thread.

It’s fun to geek out on this stuff because it can make a difference if you want to play with it, or you can just stitch on without giving it much thought, and both will give you good results.

Check out all the experiments at The Copper Fox.

Do you do anything different when you stitch with variegated floss? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: The Copper Fox]

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