Embroidery Floss

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Reported By Mary Chong

I have had many hobbies in my past — knitting, crochet, quilting, and cross-stitch to name but a few. With all exes (spouses included!), you have items that you need to reduce, recycle, reuse or burn (anyone seen Waiting to Exhale?) to make room for the NEW.

One day as I was cleaning up, I got that big light bulb over my head and thought how about using embroidery floss in my card and scrapbook projects. (Now I'm sure I wasn't the first to come up with this idea but to me, it was a big deal!) Pulling out the old needle and thread and using embroidery floss in my new craft was also the solution to my other problem of hating to lug the big sewing machine around.

I use my paper-piercing tool and my Tim Holtz Design Ruler to pre-punch my “path” before I hand sew through the card stock – this way I don’t lose track of where I’m going. A tip is to put a thick mouse pad underneath while you are poking to protect your work surface.


I use all 6 threads of the floss and a wide-eyed needle. Starting at the back, I run a little bit of dry adhesive and I stick the end of the floss to lock it in place. I prefer this way of “knotting” my floss so that you don’t see the bump on the good side of the card stock. Then I stitch away.


Here is my finished project - you can see the stitching in the top left, bottom right and as a detail along the side of the photos. (Layout is based on a sketch provided by my friend Noella)


Now don’t think that you have to use it just for sewing, embroidery thread is a great substitute for ribbon. Whatever and wherever your imagination takes you!

Here are some other images of projects using embroidery floss.



Now upon writing this article I started thinking... is this stuff archival safe? (I probably should have thought of this earlier before I used it!) As a good reporter should, I started fact checking and emailed DMC USA for the answer. Ms. DMC herself responded promptly to me via email telling me that their embroidery floss was safe for scrapbooking.

If you are still worried – there is also Karen Foster “scrappers floss”. An acid free paper product made to look like embroidery floss.

Stampington.com offers scrappers floss - 11 colour choices, 27 meters/30 yards for $2.95 US
Scrapbooking.ca has 5 colour choices of scrappers floss, 27 meters/30 yards for $2.90 Canadian

Resources:
- DMC - Embroidery Floss Manufacturer and online store
- Anchor - Embroidery Floss Manufacturer
- In a Minute Ago - Online stitch dictionary features step by step, illustrated instructions

Pros:
- Comes in a hundreds of colours and shades
- Inexpensive – so you can stock up OR use it in excess
- Sold in packs or individually
- Multitude of uses
- Found everywhere craft supplies are sold (i.e., Michaels, Joann)
- Comes in a multitude of finishes – satin, cotton, linen, metallic, glow in the dark
- Colour fast so it won’t fade
- 8 meter lengths/8.7 yards
- Archival safe

Cons:
- Difficult to thread the needle at times (due to the multiple threads)
- Does leave some lumps on the surface of your project depending on how many threads and how intricate the design you stitch
- Watch how close you place the holes especially if you plan an intricate design. This isn't fabric and therefore isn't as flexible. You don't want to accidentally tear your card stock
- Card stock isn't as forgiving as fabric - plan, plan plan - you don't want to put a hole where you don't plan on stitching.

Give it a try and break into those old cross-stitch kits and start embroidering on your cards! Now if only I could incorporate country line dancing into scrapbooking!

What do you think of this review? Have you used embroidery floss before on your cards and layouts? Do you have any tips or comments? I’d love to hear from you.