Scarlet Quince News
December 2016

I'm back! Thank you for your patience during this hiatus. There are no new patterns this time, but there will be soon. And it must be time for a ...

We are having a members-only sale! Now through December 17, all purchases by members are 15% off! Be sure to order using the email address your newsletter goes to. And tell your friends -- if they're not members they can join and take advantage of the sale too.

In the last newsletter, we mentioned a mobile app that allows you to open a pattern in PDF format, search for symbols, and mark completed stitches. Unfortunately, we got the name wrong! It is ezPDF, not expdf as we said. We hope everyone who was looking at it found it anyway.

Sometimes as you're stitching, you may notice a previously completed stitch that has come a little loose (i.e. the top thread sticks up on one side a little). If you could get at the thread on the back you could tighten it, but what if you can't?

Here's an easy and effective way to fix these stitches. Take a threaded needle (one like you're stitching with, threaded with the same number of strands of floss you're using, with no knot) and push it, eye first, down through the hole where the thread is sticking up. It may not sound like a great fix, because now the extra bit of floss is on the back instead of the front, but it will not come loose again unless you pick at it.

This has been happening to us quite a bit lately, so we gave some thought to what causes it, and how to avoid it. There are two possibilities:

1. The stitch was anchored, but not securely enough. If you have an area that is mostly one symbol, and run the needle under those stitches before cutting your floss, they should hold the floss tight. But if you're stitching a confetti area and the floss is thick on the back, just running the needle through that will not necessarily hold. In this situation, run the needle through the uppermost floss and then make a smaller second stitch, looping back toward the beginning of the first. This loop in the thread will keep the stitch from pulling loose if the anchor thread is pulled. See this anchoring tutorial, steps 3 and 4 for pictures.


2. You made the stitch, then parked the needle. It's easy for the last stitch on a parked needle to come loose. You just need to pay attention and pull the stitch tight again before the thread on the back disappears.

Our plans to move are on indefinite hold. We decided that it would be too hard on our elderly cat, Topsy, who is 19 ½! (We also failed to find a house we could agree on, but that's a minor detail.)