How to Finish Your Cross Stitch Piece

Finished stitching your pattern? Nice work! 

There are a lot of ways to "finish" your hoop - some people prefer to remove it from the hoop, iron it out, and fine a nice frame; others like to keep it on the hoop, and have the hoop itself act as a frame. 

I tend to like this second method as it makes things simple and clean - plus, the embroidery hoop kind of adds some "authenticity" to the finished piece, if that makes sense. And, I like to add a piece of felt to cover the back and all of my ugly backstitches. 

There are two main ways to finish a hoop with a felt back - to either stitch it on with a whip stitch, or to use super glue. I tend to choose the super glue method since it's fast and easy, but having a whip stitch lining your felt back looks super cute too! 

 

Using Super Glue to Attach Your Felt Back

 

Materials Needed:

- Felt square
- Completed cross stitch piece on its hoop
- Hot glue gun
- Scissors

 Steps:

(Before we get started, tighten your aida cloth on your hoop so that the fabric is nice and taught on the hoop - nothing worse than seeing the cloth sag in the middle!)

1. Trim the edges of your aida cloth in around the hoop, so that it forms a circle around your hoop. Don't trim it too close to the hoop - leave about 0.75-1cm of an edge around your hoop.

2. Trim your felt square to match the size of your hoop. You can trace it with a pencil and then snip, or just snip with your hoop on top of the felt as a marker. 

3. Now it's time to use your hot glue gun! Once it's heated up and ready to go, we want to glue down the edges of your aida to the inside of the back of your hoop (you should watch the above video to get a better idea of what I mean). The edge of the cloth should be nice and secure all of the way around before you move onto the next step.

4. Now we want to glue the felt circle we just trimmed on the back. Line it up with your hoop, and using your hot glue gun, add glue to the hoop and press the felt on carefully. You'll probably be working an inch or two at a time.

And voila! Your cross stitch piece is finished. Proudly hang it up on a wall, or use it as a Christmas ornament!