In this short tutorial, we are going to provide you with useful tips for you to help deal with the stranded cotton threads in your stitch kits when they do not have pre-sorted threads. When you buy a cross stitch kit online at a discounted price, the probability the threads not to be sorted is relatively high.
To begin with, our number one piece of advice is to make sure you sort your threads with the help of a daylight lamp to make sure that everything is as clear as possible. There are a lot of lamps on the market with a free-standing, tabletop or clip-mounted ones amongst the top, and they are fo all budgets. You may look up at the Daylight Company or Craftlamps.co.uk to find an option to suit you.
So let’s see the process of sorting cotton threads.
How many thread lengths of each shade are included in your kit? When sorting, it’s all about the process of elimination. To begin with, the black, green, red, yellow, blue, dark pink, and light pink – they are pretty easy to pick out. And the white, well, it’s also easy to take pick it out. So now, you are left with a lot of nuances of grays. The charcoal gray, you can pick out easily too. Now, with the help of a card sorter, what you have to do is to arrange the rest from dark to light so you can easily notice the nuances. Sometimes you will need to try and match them up a little carefully just to make sure, and this is where a daylight lamp is going to come in handy.
So, now you have everything sorted, even those very similar gray shades which is going to be great for that bunny shading.
And now a quick recap of the whole process:
1. You need a good daylight to avoid mistakes.
2. Start with a clearly labeled card sorter.
3. Begin by laying out all the threads to check everything is present.
4. Eliminate some colours that are easy to identify.
5. Come back to work out the coloured shades and take a bit more time with those to make sure there is no confusion.
