Using Counting Pins in Cross Stitch

Here’s another topic in cross stitch that I didn’t know anything about until I found a post about it: counting pins.

I mean, it makes sense that you could use pins as an alternative to gridding your cross stitch fabric for a big project, but I guess I had never heard of anyone doing it or how it might be done until I saw this post from Stitching the Night Away.

Tommye J Bunce explains that counting pins are like blunt tapestry needles and they are a specific thing that’s made for this purpose — you don’t just use sewing pins to mark your design grid.

These pins can be used to mark out an area where you’re stitching the same color for a long time. Say you have 25 stitches in a row that are the same color. Instead of counting as you stitch (and recounting over and over to make sure you’ve got the right number) you can just mark those 25 stitches with pins and know that every stitch between them is the same color.

You can also use them to help you mark your place when you’re stitching some distance from the last stitches you worked. Say you’re stitching all the parts that are in one color and part of it is away from the rest.

You can get more details on what counting pins are and how to use them from the post at Stitching the Night Away. Tommye sold counting pins until their retirement but you can find lots of options on Etsy, including the colorful ones shown above, which are from Stitchingly Along.

Have you ever used counting pins for cross stitch? I’d love to hear about it. Or if you’re new to knowing these things exist let me know that too and make me feel better!

[Photo via Stitchingly Along]

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All about Cross-Stitch Needles

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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