Sometimes, when I’m wandering around craft-shops and haberdasheries, I pick things up and think Oh, this would be perfect for…! or I wonder…Would this work…? I think it might. And then I buy whatever with that plan in mind, but never get around to testing my theory.
I have no doubt whatsoever that I’m not the first crafter to think these things, and nor will I be the last.
On a trip to Hobbycraft some time ago, I picked up a plain cream cotton drawstring bag, having studied the weave and decided that, you know, I think it might work for cross-stitching on.
And then I put it to one side, because I had the far more promising linen found in IKEA. I’ve got other IKEA fabrics, which second thoughts are making me doubt whether they will work for cross-stitch.
But, with my family’s birthday season (and Christmas) upon me (kick-off last week with mine), I finally got around to testing this draw-string bag, which I reckon would make a nice, if small, bag for wool. I found a cute design in September 2015 CrossStitcher of a kitten playing with a ball of wool. And I spent an hour and a half or so stitching, after discovering that I only needed one strand of my floss.
As you can see, it worked, but the count on this is quite high, so the stitches are small. It was also more time consuming than it might have been if I’d been using “proper” cross-stitch fabric. I doubt if it would be worth trying to stitch anything larger on it though, but Hobbycraft also do pencil-case-style items in the same, plain, cream cotton, which would be quite simple to turn into make-up cases or similar. Wonderful time-saver, to have it already made up into a bag or make-up case.
Fairy Cake Living 