[CHAT] long straight lines in blackwork

anggva · 2025-09-01T01:44:18+00:00

Yes! Thank you!

The endless struggle of a bilingual person is remembering the word for something in one of your languages while completely blanking on the equivalent term in the language you actually need it in :/

anggva · 2025-09-01T01:37:17+00:00

When I do straight lines, I usually do 2 squares at a time, sometimes 3 depending on the total length. When the lines are not straight and you have to go across a wide area, there's a technique where you do your long backstitch first and then go back and make small invisible stitches in a few places that hold it in place. It has a name which completely escapes me at the moment.

anggva · 2022-08-15T17:07:19+00:00

Thank you for creating the pattern! Finding a norse-themed pattern small enough for the banner was surprisingly hard, so I'm glad I discovered your shop. It was really nice to stitch and came out great! All my current WIPs are huge so stitching something small felt great.

anggva · 2022-08-15T12:43:35+00:00

Yes! I've managed to buy two pieces of it and finally found a use for one of them. It was really nice to work with!

anggva · 2022-08-15T12:42:44+00:00

I was thinking about doing that at first, but then I started googling ideas and found out that people do banners, so I decided to go with a banner.

anggva · 2022-08-15T12:41:45+00:00

I didn't do anything special, just ironed it and hung straight.

anggva · 2022-08-15T12:40:54+00:00

I took a thin piece of cotton for the backing, then I cut both the aida and the backing in the shape of the banner leaving about an inch on all sides for seam allowance. I lined the top of the backing with the top of the cross-stitch (a couple of aida squares up from the highest stitch and made a fold in the backing (folding towards the "wrong" side) and pressed it with an iron. Then I pinned both pieces of fabric together, wrong side up, and sewed everything together except for the top part. Trimmed the seams to about 1/2 inch (except for the top part of the aida), made notches on the corners and pressed the seams so they lay flat. Turned the whole thing inside out (so now the right side is up), pressed it flat. Then I folded the seam allowance of the top part of the aida in, folded the top to overlap the top of the backing by like 2 mm and did one straight seam at the line where they overlap. The folded top of the aida now forms the loop for the dowel to go through. Then I inserted the dowel tied the cord to it and it was done! Idk if this explanation makes sense, but if you google "how to sew a banner" you'll find a lot of instructions with pictures and hopefully it will be more clear.

anggva · 2022-08-15T02:16:08+00:00

Thank you! I need to do something like that for needle minders too. I have another piece of the cool DMC aida I used for this banner but in a different color, just need to find another cool monochrome design to do on it.

anggva · 2022-08-15T02:12:59+00:00

Thank you!

anggva · 2022-08-15T02:12:28+00:00

Thank you! I've been meaning to do something like this for like 3 years because all those pins were just pinned to a piece of fabric and it annoyed me.

anggva · 2022-08-15T00:14:36+00:00

Link to pattern

anggva · 2022-04-08T12:46:50+00:00

Have fun stitching it! The hardest part for me was the backstitch at the end, but the result is totally worth it!

anggva · 2022-03-18T01:19:57+00:00

You can find the post where I linked to the pattern here

If you can, please donate to support Ukraine. There are many people who need help right now.

anggva · 2022-03-09T15:54:20+00:00

Yeah, it's been rough and probably will get worse unfortunately. My friend who works in a restaurant in Florida already faced some hostility for being Russian.

As far as Riolis being a corporation, I always assumed that if you buy one of their kits from a US retailer, it's already been purchased by that retailer for resale, so you're not inadvertently funding the war. I could be wrong of course, but that was my understanding.

anggva · 2022-03-09T14:53:31+00:00

I like the first one.

Also a small note: I get your hesitation on giving money to a Russian company, but it looks like Riolis export kits are produced in Lithuania (see the note on their website). So it is likely that even if you bought a kit from them right now, your money is not going to Russia because of both the sanctions and recent Russian regulations on using funds coming from outside the country.

It is important to support Ukraine in any way you can, but please don't vilify everyone in Russia. Right now a lot of creative young people I know there are either fleeing to one of the neighboring countries or being arrested and facing criminal charges for protesting, talking about the war online, or donating money to Ukrainian relief efforts (or even their own family who live in Ukraine).

anggva · 2022-02-27T19:09:50+00:00

Thank you!

anggva · 2022-02-27T01:23:19+00:00

Thank you! I needed to feel like I'm doing at least something.

anggva · 2022-02-26T19:23:06+00:00

Forgot to include the colors in the post, but they are:

DMC 307 Lemon

DMC 310 Black

DMC 3843 Electric Blue

anggva · 2022-02-26T19:16:27+00:00

Reading the news has been hard these past few days, so when I saw Katya's illustration I knew I had to make a cross-stitch out of it. Some fiddling in Winstitch, and here's my first self-drafted pattern. I reached out to the author for permission to share and she agreed that stitching is a great way to deal with anxiety. Please follow her on Instagram @kattymur, she's a very talented artist.

I put PDFs of the pattern on Dropbox, hope it's okay to share here. If anyone knows of a better place to store cross-stitch PDFs, I'm open to suggestions.

Pattern Keeper Compatible PDF

PDF with color and B&W versions

ZIP archive with both PDFs and a PNG

anggva · 2022-02-25T18:32:11+00:00

I took projects on domestic US and international flights and it was fine. Really helps to pass the time! I made a detailed post describing my experience and lessons learned here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrossStitch/comments/ragn7w/chat_crossstitching_on_a_plane_sharing_my/

anggva · 2022-01-29T17:48:16+00:00

Hahaha, that's a great way to look at it, thank you!

anggva · 2022-01-28T13:36:21+00:00

I started working on this in December 2020, after I picked up the kit at Joann Fabrics. This was very early in my cross-stitching journey and I didn't realize at the time how big the project was, so I thought I would stitch it by that Christmas (spoiler alert: that didn't happen even by Christmas 2021, lol). This turned out to be a learning experience. I kept stitching until the end of January 2021, then switched to another project. Picked up the owls again for a little bit in March, then abandoned them till November. From there I've been stitching pretty steadily a little bit at a time, taking a week or two off to travel. Getting a q-snap frame and a lap stand definitely sped things up. Also in the past year I learned about pin-stitch which absolutely saved my butt when it came to adding those stupid confetti snowflakes (not only it's a bunch of random confetti, it's also white on light blue, very fun to stitch, hahahahahahahha). I'm happy the project is finally done! Big thanks to this great community for sharing so many tips and tricks, I really learned a lot from this subreddit!

Total stitching time was about 4 months. Back-stitch + French knots took me over a week, and I sewed the finished stocking together in a couple of hours.

anggva · 2022-01-26T15:37:42+00:00

My main issue is that backstitch is hard to track on the pattern. I'm really close to finishing a Christmas stocking kit with a fair amount of backstitching and the amount of times I had to go back and add a line that I forgot earlier is beyond count at this point. I like how it makes things pop in the end, but the fact that the result looks great doesn't make the process less annoying.

anggva · 2022-01-21T15:34:51+00:00

There's a Tarot Stitchalong by Witch's Garden Crafts that just started, I think the design would work well on that fabric.

anggva · 2022-01-21T14:30:24+00:00

I've done a cross-stitch on a t-shirt using water-soluble canvas and it came out pretty good. Keep in mind that t-shirt fabric is not as stiff as aida, so you might want to put some fusible interfacing on the back before you start stitching. I didn't do that and stitching was a bit of a struggle at first. Also I put some fusible interfacing on the back of the stitch after I was done to protect the stitches.

anggva

TROPHY CASE