I wasn’t feeling too well over the weekend and I was sort of vegged out in the living room watching TV with my husband, I picked up the wedding sampler I’ve been working on to finish up the little bit of stitching that is left on it.
I knew I was near the end of the skein of DMC 210, but I really thought I had just enough to wrap up the project. I have maybe a dozen or so stitches left to do that in color and – poof – I ran out of it.
I know I had a backup skein of this color somewhere, but can I find it today? No, of course not. I’ve gone through all my stash, rifled through other projects that were kitted up and ready to stitch, sorted through my floss boxes, and haven’t found a single skein of 210 anywhere. I found three skeins of 211 and two skeins of 209, but no 210. I will flip this house upside down later to find it if I have to!
What is your most frustrating stitching moment? Leave a comment below.
I hope your weekend stitching is going better than mine 😉
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Actually, what you just described IS my most frustrating moment!! No matter how hard I try NOT to have duplicates, I get them anyway. Furthermore, they’re usually in a color I don’t need right away!!! Because I live 10 miles out of town, I have to really plan my shopping trips. Fortunately, we have a Ben Franklins right next door to Grocery Outlet, a store I buy groceries all the time. If I’m going into town, I look at my colors and the “map” to gage how much floss I might be using. If it looks like it’s running thin, it gets put on the list. But, no matter how organized I try to be, I find myself running out of a color and tearing apart my stash, room and hair, in order to find another skein. I guess that’s the pitfalls of this hobby!!!
The incident that frustrated me the most was when I first started cross stitching back in my teens. Somehow I miscalculated the top to bottom stitch area I needed and as I got closer to the top I realized I was pretty much out of cloth with a fair bit of stitching to do. Couldn’t even fake my way out of that one! In any case it had turned out to not be as great a project as I would have liked anyways, so I just took it off the scroll and calmly threw it in the trash. All that work down the drain! To this day (some 35+ years of cross stitch later) I have never made that mistake again. I learned quickly the old carpenter’s rule of thumb…. “measure twice and cut once.” Wonder if anyone else ever pulled that stunt, be interesting to find out!
Indeed I have done the same thing! I’m stitching away and probably 3/4 of the way through a project call “Enchanted Alphabet” Very cute, varigated colored project. I noticed that around the letter “M”, I was looking short on fabric. I decided to measure and sure enough, I was not going to make it. I sat there in utter shock and was bound and determined to figure out what I had done. Alas, I thought I had 16 count aida and I had 14 count. I cut it as if I had 16. Such a depressing moment. I love the design and may even attempt it again someday on linen. However, it’s just too soon (15 years later) thanks for sharing your story. You are definitely not alone.
Colleen Clark
My pet peeve is when you have 3~5 stitches left and there is just not enough length of thread, even if pull it out of the needle and push the needle in and thread it on each part. So you have to start and tie off a whole new thread just for 2 or 3 stitches, and if you hadn’t been lazy earlier and did just 1 or 2 more stitches you wouldn’t have the problem!
I use Thread Tracking software on my iPad ( its also on iPhone I think ) to keep track of what threads I have and how many, and what I need to buy. Saves my hair but for some stupid reason I still end up buying some duplicates.