Washing and lacing
If you want to wash your stitching, immerse it in warm water, use just a little detergent and then rinse it well in cold water. To press it, use an iron on a medium setting. Put a fluffy towel on your ironing board and push the iron on the back of stitching. This way you can keep the raised appearance of your stitches on the front. If you want to stretch your work out over a mount board before framing, the best way you can do it is lacing it with crochet cotton.
- Cut your mount board to the frame size. Put your stitching front side up on the white side of the board. If the positioning of your fabric is good enough, push the lines of pins down into each side of the board.
- Check if your stitching is lined up and trim the fabric. Leave only 5cm borders. You will have some excess. Fold it over the back of the border. Take a long length of crochet cotton, thread it into the needle, make a knot at the end and lace opposite sides together on the back. When you come from one end to another, adjust threads one by one before you finish.
- Do the same lacing with two remaining edges. Fold down the corners and stitch them. After that you can remove pins and put your work in the frame.
When you finish off the colour, pull the thread through four or five stitches on the back of the fabric by weaving the needle through them. Then cut the thread as close to your fabric as possible and start with the new colour. When you restart, let a short tail of the thread stay at the back of the fabric. You will cover it with your first stitches.
In some designs you will need seed beads to add some details. On the chart they correspond to dots and are listed in the key as extra materials. Add beads with half cross stitches. Bring the needle up from the bottom left corner, thread the bead on the needle and then go down at the top right corner. For this work you will need a beading needle or a tapestry needle for adding beads size 28. And to ensure yourself that your work will be neat, work the top half of the cross stitch making each strand sit either side of the bead.
Very often stitchers start off using aida. The grid of holes on this fabric divides it into squares, so one square corresponds with one cross stitch. Experienced stitchers often prefer evenweavers such as linen or jobelan. They also look like a grid, but there one cross stitch is worked over 2 threads of the fabric. Bring the needle up at the bottom left corner of the square and then go down two holes up and two holes across.