Waste canvas: not just for sweatshirts and geese

I first learned to cross stitch in junior high school, but got really into it in the early 90s when I was in college. I guess it was a stress-buster during breaks from studying, juggling work, etc.

Remember back in the 80s-90s when many of the cross stitch designs were cute little geese and teddy bears and Christmas nutcrackers? I decided that it would be great to have some sweatshirts or t-shirts with these kinds of designs stitched into them and bought some waste canvas to make it happen.

Fortunately good sense or lack of time prevented it from happening. Meanwhile, I've had this waste canvas in my stash all this time, and I finally pulled it out for my crazy quilt project.

I think you're supposed to baste it onto your fabric, but it was such a little piece that I just used a couple of pins. The stitch count is very high - maybe 14 ct - so I had to search for a motif that was small enough to fit onto a little patch. I settled on some cutie birds from Blackbird Designs.

After stitching, I trimmed the waste canvas close to the stitching. Since the directions had gone missing long ago, I couldn't remember if you were suposed to wet the canvass to loosen the starch/glue that tacks the fibers together, but I didn't want to wet the border, which worked out to be fine. I pulled out the stitches with tweezers.

All done! Oops, except for a missing stitch on the first bird's tail. Well, good thing I was looking at the photos while I'm still in the middle of it all. :)