Tips to Prepare Your Cross Stitch Fabric

I am going to be really honest here and tell you that I’ve never really done anything to prepare my cross stitch fabric before I start stitching (unless it’s a big project and I need a grid, but I hardly ever even do that).

Notorious Needle has a great post all about ways you can prepare for cross stitching that will make it easier or give you a better result. If you’re working a small, quick project for yourself you might do less of this kind of preparation, but if you’re working on a large project that will be framed, given as a gift or that you want to become an heirloom, these steps will help ensure that you start your project in the best way.

A lot of this is about making sure that you have enough fabric for the framing option that you want to use or so your project will fit in the hoop you want to use to stitch your project, and taking care of your fabric to make the stitching easier.

The post covers a lot of the basics that you might have learned naturally if you’ve been cross stitching for a while, but if you’re new to cross stitching or haven’t done a big project before, these ideas are super helpful. It’s great to get in the habit of doing these things and thinking ahead about how you might want to finish your project before you start. Then these things will just be things you do all the time and your projects are sure to come out better.

Go check out the post and let me know if you do these things. Or if you have other tips for getting started on a cross stitch pattern to make it easier/more successful, let’s talk about it.

[Photo: Notorious Needle]

How to Grid Cross Stitch Fabric

How to Join Two Pieces of Plastic Canvas

How to Choose the Perfect Color Fabric for Your Cross Stitch Project

Cross Stitch Borders and How to Use Them

Pairing learning with activities and games is the best way to get kids to learn, and there are a lot of ways to make math centers to help kids learn numbers, number order, one to one correspondence and more.

Each of those skills could probably be its own post, but let’s delve a little deeper into some ideas for math centers for early learners.

Ten frames are a classic for learning to count and understanding numbers. It’s just a grid of five columns and two rows to start with, so you can draw one by hand or on your computer, or make one out of tape on the floor like this version from Busy Toddler. It includes an activity using a deck of cards and little toys to count out the number you see.

Similarly, this dot sticker math activity from Happy Toddler Playtime uses Uno cards and has kids peel and stick the number they see on the card. You can do this with stickers of any kind, dot markers or whatever manipulatives you have on hand, from pom poms to little erasers.

Peeling stickers is a great fine motor activity addition to the math center, and another take on that is this one from Laughing Kids Learn, where she wrote numbers in muffin liners. Kids can use tongs or tweezers to pick up pompoms to place the correct number in each liner. You could also use plastic cups for this.

And speaking of cups, any cup with a rim (these are actually Styrofoam, not plastic) can be used to make an easy number tower activity for your math center. This one is from The Activity Mom and is super simple to set up. You could actually use the same cups for different activities such as stacking the cups in order, doing odd and even numbers or placing items in the cups.

While kids are learning the numbers in order they can play with this missing number math activity from Planning Playtime. It uses supplies you probably already have — craft sticks and clothespins — and is another great fine motor skill builder at the same time it teaches math skills.

These last few are paid but they’re cute so I couldn’t help sharing. Use unit cubes to build a city with building of differing heights with this printable from Preschool Activities. Or count with plastic links with this one from The Kinderhearted Classroom. I also love the flip, make and build printable from Blocks and Beads that helps teach counting up to 10.

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