Reliving my childhood crafts: cross-stitching

For quite a while in my elementary and middle school years, I was really into counted cross-stitch. It had been years since I last worked on a cross-stitch project, but a year or so ago I had the urge to try it again. The next time I went to my parents’ house, I picked up my bag of embroidery floss, needles, pattern books, and Aida cloth – a woven cloth designed for cross-stitch.

one of my favorite parts: all the pretty colors of floss

All of my earlier projects I stitched on Aida cloth. It produces very neat stitches, but is kind of useless unless you put it in a frame and hang it on the wall. I wanted to make something that could actually be used and enjoyed around my house. Looking through a cross-stitch pattern book, I read about waste canvas – a grid of threads held together with water-soluble glue. Probably most serious cross-stitchers know about this, but somehow this had totally passed me by! After loosely stitching the waste canvas onto any fabric you want, you can use the grid to place your stitches. Once complete, you dampen the entire design, and use tweezers to pull the grid threads out.

My first waste-canvas-enabled project: veggie napkins!