…on the thread day of Christmas…

…my true love gave to me, six loose thread bobbins, five paper layers, four paint colours, three fave stencils, two adhesives and a thread minder in a pear tree.

Ok, so grand lyricist I am not. What I am, though, is rather adept at taking hold of an idea and running with it. Occasionally I even finish said idea. Over the weekend, I was merrily stitching away on my Christmas cross-stitch, and slowly, my needle minder was becoming choked with floss off cuts that I was shoving between the two magnets. My floss bobbins were insistent on running away, and when we went to the pool for a swim, it was a juggle to get towels and book and drink and the loose bobbins and the random bits of thread where they needed to be. I got sick of constantly chasing the floss, and so I took myself off to the craft room to make myself a thread minder.

I have been hoarding the last of my Basic Grey “Dasher” paper fork don’t know how long, and I decided to be brave and actually use it for this project. My abject terror of wasting a hoarded item on an unworthy project showed up no long after, as I prepared to add some gelli print accents to the background. Looking for only something subtle, I used a thin layer of paint, and by the time I layered three couloirs and grabbed my paper, it transpired that my craft room was hot enough to dry the paint and nothing transferred! Attempt two was more successful, where I simply printed each colour one at a time. But the time I did just two colours this time, and put my paper down, I was having to work hard to clean my gelli plate, and most of the paint actually formed crumbs as it came off, it was that dry! Lesson learned, find a cooler room of the house to work in if I want to gelli print over summer!

With all the various bits done, I then ran it through the laminator, trimmed the corners and went to work with my cropadile. A book ring was the final addition to hold the bobbins, and a larger hole punched on the right hand side meant it had a home to keep everything all together, ready for a busy couple of weeks of stitching. The colours came together beautifully and match my project (a very important part of thread minder design!). My current conundrum now I have a themed thread minder, is do I need a themed needle minder and project pouch? A big part of me, the easily distracted by new projects part, says “of course”. The practical part of me says “just finish the darn cross stitch”. Considering how much I love how the cross stitch is coming together, I’m inclined to roll with the practical…