Needle Tips and Tricks

I love to create both easy and complex patterns for counted cross stitch patterns. These patterns can have a couple colors like my free Easter Bunny:

or my more complex patterns that come from some of the photography that I did while traveling around the West Coast.

When working on a smaller color pattern, it is fairly easy to keep the colors straight and switch the colors out of your needle, but when you get to a more complex pattern, it is more difficult to keep things straight.

Here are some tips for working with multiple colors:

• Use more than one needle keeping the other needles threaded and stuck in a pincushion or a wrist cushion.
• Get a piece of stiff cardboard and punch holes in it to hang your threads in color order. Mark the cardboard with the color number. You can even draw the symbol on the cardboard.
• Stitch the same direction for every portion of the pattern. A left to right stitch makes it smooth, but if you add a top to bottom stitch, it can stand out against the rest of the stitches.
• Cut shorter pieces of floss to keep it from tangling. I use about 18-inches, even if that means that I need to cut more often. I seem to tangle easily.
• Occasionally, hold your canvas up and let your needle spin to unwind since it will twist while stitching.
• Pull your floss apart into individual strands before you start; then add them to your cardboard, so you have them available when you’re ready to add more floss.

I am sure there are more, and if you have some, please feel free to add them to the comment section, so we can all see them.

Enjoy,

Julie and Blu

PS – Sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss a single new pattern that we add to the site.

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *