Cheating at Cross Stitch

I finished the "Welcome" mat. It was another of those things that takes longer than you think it will.

I put it on # 18 Aida cloth. I hate working on that stuff, but I thought it would be easier to see the finished product and how I did it. I usually work on hardanger(#22) or congress cloth(needlepoint canvas #24) I tend to split all of those nasty little threads in the Aida.

Here's the start. If you have never done this before and have read all the directions that come with kits, please do it as the kit says. I am doing this my own way because I have been cross stitching for many years and have devised my own rules. I make them up as I go along.

I always work on plain fabric off of a chart, whether it is one I designed or one that someone else has put in a book. So the first thing I do is take a pencil and make little lines at 10 stitch intervals + any extra stitches the pattern requires, in both directions. The powers that be always tell you to start in the middle and work out. That is a good idea for beginners. Having been at this as long as I have, I know that my stitches are going to be the right tension. Therefore, I usually do the boarder first so that I can see how much fabric I have to cover and how large the rug or whatever is going to be. Translation:The boarder comes first so that I can see how bored I will be by the time I finish.

I will not bother you with all of the in between steps in photos. I did it on the #18 count fabric and then decided that since the Buttercup didn't even have a front stoop yet, It should go to the quilt shop.

I did the brown around the edges first. Then I did the green and yellow border, one color at a time. The last thing I did was the welcome and the brown centers of the flowers.

Here's the back of the rug and the cheating part. Since I wanted the background a cream color anyway, I did the embroidery on cream Aida. That way I don't have to cross stitch the background unless I want to. I don't want to! I am a lazy person at heart and who is going to say"Ooooh! You forgot to do the background on the welcome mat!". Most people won't even look at it. Secret...That's how the rug in the Buttercup was done.

I always finish my rugs by running white glue around the last line of stitching around the edge on the back. I let it dry. If I want a clean finished rug I simply cut close to the last line of stitches. This makes for a rug that lays perfectly flat and it is more in scale, thickness-wise, than if it were folded under and glued.

If it is a darker color thread on a lighter color fabric, I use a marker close to the color of the thread and run it around the edge to color the light ends of the fabric to match the thread. If you want fringe on the ends of the rug you can simply cut the fabric several rows from the edge. This will make the fringe the right length. Then pull the crosswise threads in the fabric.

In this case, I decided to leave fringe on all four sides. I cut the fabric 3 lines of Aida away from the edge all the way around and then picked out the threads from all sides to leave the fringe.

Without the fringe, the #18 rug measured 3 1/4"x 1 1/2". If I did it the original size(#22) it would be 2 7/8" X 1 5/16". I would probably put a couple more lines around the edge and leave the fringe off if I did it on #22.

That's one nice thing about the cross stitch program that I have. I can set the graph to whatever size I want to work on. When I print it out, the pattern is the actual size of the finished rug.

Yup. I'm the one that made a rug the wrong size for the Mystery House. Nope. I didn't check, even though I had the means to do so. Oh well. That just means an extra rug that I won't have to make some other time......I hope.

See you tomorrow.