How to Wash and Press the Cross Stitch Project

Hi, I’m Jannette and we’re in the cross stitch studio in Old Town Needlecrafts. I’m going to show you how to finish off your piece and prepare it for framing. We have finished the cross stitching on this little piece. From the hand lane, there is some little oils and things that are on your hands that really need to be taken off before you further piece either on the glass or put it in a frame the finished thing.

So what we need to is we need to put into some very tepid water and we’re going to use a very mild detergent. Do not use Woolite because Woolite has a tendency to interact with the dice and DMC and other flosses and it will cause them to run. Other than that, most any and very mild detergent that you can use on any other natural fiber will work just fine.

We’re going to just kind of soak it for a minute and let the dirty bits come out of it so it will be nice and fresh when we’re ready to mount it. We’ve now washed it in our very mild soap and if you’d look at the water you’ll see that there is actually kind of a muddy look to it or a little dirty look to it that in the case that there were things in this material that needed to come out before it was actually prepared for mounting.

Next we’re going to rinse the piece and make sure that we’ve rinsed it really well and after we’ve rinsed it, we’re going to wrap it in a towel and then we’re going to press it on the wrong side.

Normally, at home, I would be pressing this on my ironing board. I will still have a towel that I’m pressing into. I have my iron set for cotton and I have a towel that’s a clean Turkish towel and I’m putting the piece faced down on the towel. I'm going to be pressing on the back and so, I will start by pressing and I just keep gently moving the iron over the piece. Be careful not to scorch it then press it until it's just almost dry but not quite. You will see all of the little wrinkles come out of the fabric.

This kind of blocks it too. You can kind of pull it a little bit into shape if it's moved a little bit out and now the piece is ready to mount. If you look at the piece, the stitching actually stands up just a little bit after you have washed and pressed it and looks very pretty and ready to work on.

When we come back, we’re going to show you how to mount it and finish it.