by Stacey Wells Professional Model Stitcher and Upcoming Designer, written for Stitching the Night Away
You have piles of you favorite Cross Stitch Magazines. Or maybe you don’t, and you are just starting out in this wonderfully addictive hobby. Either way you eventually come to the point where you look around, and think if I don’t find a way to tame the magazines I’m going to drown, or one of the towers are going to fall and I’ll be buried alive. May not be a bad way to go but personally I want to expire with needle in hand. I’ve been lucky over the years where stitching friends have given me their Magazine collections when the hobby no longer interests them (I know horror but true).
So what can you do? After much thought, trial and error I came up with a way of keeping just those designs, and stitching related articles that have appeal to me. Here is my own way of taming the Magazines.
The first thing I do is *live* with the newest Magazine or collection. I pour over the Magazine/s for at least a week. Looking at all the designs, and reading all the articles. I do this so that when it comes time to “pull” I’m keeping exactly what I want.
The second thing I do is carefully pull out all designs (making sure that I get all the pages), and articles.
The third thing I do is gather all my storage supplies. This consists of plastic page protectors, and a binder. I put 2 designs per each page protector, and I ensure that the beautiful color picture of the stitched item is visible. So when you slip those designs and articles that you have deemed worthy of keeping into the page protectors you want the actual pattern in between the color pictures of the stitched items. This way when flipping through the binder you are able to see at a glance what pattern is in each plastic page protector.
It’s that simple! I now have 3 binders. One is general stitching designs, one for Christmas designs (I love stitching Christmas designs), and one for articles. I also don’t limit my binders to just Magazine Designs anymore my binders now hold all my designs. I find it a simple way of storage so nothing gets lost or dirty.
Special thank you to Stacey Wells for contributing to this article.
