I’ve got to tell you that I’ve been cross stitching for about 42 years and I just learned about water soluble cross stitch canvas!  Why didn’t I know about this sooner?!  In the past I always bought cross stitch kits at the craft store and then I started designing my own patterns so I just stitched the “normal” way.

Well .. I got this little free kit from an issue of the Cross Stitcher Magazine.  I’ve had it in my to-do basket for years and finally decided to start stitching things in that basket.  The kit came with linen fabric … no holes there!  And a piece of “plastic” with holes in it.  I looked at the packaging and it said “soluble canvas”.  So .. I taped it on the linen and started stitching.  It was kind of hard at first to see the holes but I grabbed out my Ott Lite and that made it a lot easier.

After I finished stitching the design, I untaped everything and put the fabric in a bowl of water.  There were no instructions for this so I winged it.  I let it sit in the water for about 15 minutes and then rinsed it off.  I patted it dry and after a half an hour or so, it was still sticky, so I rinsed it a few more times until all of the stickiness went away.

This opens up a million ideas for cross stitching on “regular” fabric!!  I’ve had an idea to stitch something on a pair of jeans ..

What about you?  Have you used this Soluble Canvas before?

This is the OttLite I use.  It provides natural light and is great when lighting isn’t the best.