♫ A Little Bit of Color in Your Life ♪

Still stitching away on my Stitch-Along project. I've changed floss colors 3 times - background fabrics twice - and sashing fabrics once. I'm normally not this indecisive but the other ladies in the group have had such inspiring selections!  As you can see, I've decided to go with the variegated floss.  Have you used this?

When I spoke to the ladies at the shop, they gave me several pieces of advice:

1. NEVER trust that it's colorfast.  Snip off a section, soak in hot water, and dry on a piece of white fabric or paper towel.  If it runs, you will need to set the color before using it.
2. Hand-dyed and overdyed floss are sold in shorter lengths than DMC. They are typically 5 ounces instead of 8 ounces.
3. ALWAYS buy more than you need because dye-lots change!  They showed me several examples on the display wall where the color changed considerably between their re-stock orders (all had the same item numbers on them).
4. When embroidering with floss, always separate your floss before threading your needle.  If you need two strands, pull them out from the skein one at a time, lay them together, and then load your needle.  Your stitches will lay flat and you will have less tangling.
5. Also, and I had never thought of this, when you pull out your two strands from the skein and lay them together, make sure you lay them down in the same direction you pull them out.  That way (in my example below) the green sections of one strand will lay next to the green of the other strand to give you a nice solid color when stitching.  If you reverse them, than you may have green next to red, which may give a muddled appearance.  I typically separate all six strands first, pair them up, and load 3 needles before I start stitching.

A good friend from the Stitch-Along recommended the site 123stitch.com for some amazing threads.  I'm not affiliated with them so you can trust my word that their pricing is very competitive and the shipping was quick & very inexpensive.  For this project, I ordered the Threadworx Overdyed Christmas Time variegated floss.

I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Happy Saturday everyone!

Elisa