To Ways to Back a Hoop to Frame Cross Stitch

A popular way to finish embroidery and cross stitch patterns is to frame them in the hoop you stitched them in. This is an easy way to finish projects and you can make it a little fancier by painting the hoop on the outside to add more color.

The only potential issue with framing your cross stitch in this way is that you might not want to see — or let other people see — what the back of your cross stitch project looks like. I know my projects are generally a mess from the back, so it’s nice to take an extra step and cover the back of the hoop so you can’t see the back of the stitching.

There are a couple of different ways to do this, and thankfully Crewel Ghoul has us covered.

Probably the easiest way to add back fabric to your cross stitch hoop is by using felt. This method as shown in the blog post has you stitch down the felt to the edge of the cross stitch fabric that is secured to the inside of the hoop. It takes a little time to sew it down, but the benefit is that it can be removed if you ever decide you want to frame the project in a different way or you don’t want to display that piece any more but you want to reuse the hoop.

The other option is to use fabric on the back. In this version they use glue instead of stitching to hold the fabric down, but that makes this method more permanent. You can also do the same method as with the felt and just sew the backing down by hand if you want it to be more easily removable.

Gluing it down is a great option when giving a cross stitch project as a gift because then the person you’re giving it to will never see the back side of your work and it might be more secure to back it this way.

Have you ever used either of these methods? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

A while back I made a little rainbow cross stitch pattern and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I turned it into a patch. My idea was that it could be used on a jacket or backpack, or you could add a pin to the back and wear it temporarily on a shirt or elsewhere.

But what if you want to make your design more permanent? Is it possible to turn a piece of cross stitch into an iron-on design?

It turns out yes, it is, and Sirious Stitches has done it so I didn’t have to try to figure it out on my own.

The way they did it was by using HeatnBond, an iron-on adhesive that attaches fabrics without sewing. There was still sewing involved to finish the edges of the cross stitch fabric and make it look like a purchased patch. The post shows how to do this by hand or with your sewing machine. (I just did blanket stitch edging on mine, which doesn’t look like a “real” patch but is also a lot faster.)

Once you have the patch prepared it’s a pretty easy matter of using the fusible adhesive to the back of the patch so you can then iron it onto whatever jacket, pair of jeans, bag or whatever else you might want to add it to.

I guess I’m a little paranoid about the washability of cross stitch projects, though you could hand wash anything with an iron-on cross stitch patch as you might need to with a purchased iron-on patch, anyway. But this does look really cool and is a great option if you know you want to permanently add a cross stitch patch to a garment of bag.

Get the full tutorial over at Sirious Stitches. Would you add an iron-on cross stitch patch to something? I’d love to hear what you would use this technique for!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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