Floss Tags

Back when we were all much younger, we had friends with small children – a boy who was about 7 and a girl who was maybe 3. Once the mom was either sick or out of town and the dad was getting the kids ready for church. I remember him saying “It’s easy to get boys ready but once the girl is ready, she still has to be decorated.” He was talking hair bows and cute socks and whatever else a 3 year old required.

I keep thinking about that with my floss.

All of my floss, since I first started using floss back in the 80’s, has been kept on bobbins. It’s worked fine. Nowadays, many of the cross stitchers put their floss on floss tags. As I see it, there are advantages and disadvantages.

With floss tags, it’s pretty! It’s also easy to pull out one or two strands. The floss is usually cut to either 18″ or 36″ lengths. I try to only use one strand so I cut most of mine to 18″. If I were using two strands, I’d cut it to 36″, double one strand and start with a loop.

Another advantage to floss tags is that many of the flosses we use now are overdyes and they come on a card so I usually leave them on that, don’t put them on a different tag. Then once the project is finished, I put them back in alphabetical order with the rest of the floss from that company.

The disadvantage, at least til someone tells me a better way, is that once I finish with a bunch of DMC on a tag, I guess I’ll hang it on rings – maybe 1 – 50 on one ring, 51 – 100 on another ring and so on. With the bobbins, I popped them back in the plastic box, always keeping them in numerical order.

You can see that the brown cards are the cards on which the overdyed floss arrives. They’re fine for the floss to stay on them. The more colorful tags, I made. I glued pretty paper onto cardstock, let it dry and punched the tags out. It isn’t really terribly time consuming and it’s kinda fun.

They’re out now but will probably get them back in stock – Colorado Cross Stitcher had milk caps with the holes already punched. They’re interesting and cute and quick to use.

Recently, on a few flosstubes, they were talking about ordering business cards to use for floss tags. Business cards at places like Vista Print are really inexpensive so I ordered some.

While many were using pictures of something they’ve cross stitched, my first two sets were pictures of Addie.

This was taken at some festival where they had face painting.

Of course, this is my grandpa’s old pickup. The floss tags work better with an image that fits vertically on the business card but I figured this one was worth it for the smile it would bring my uncle, Addie and Chad.

I had briefly thought it would be nice if the cards arrived while Addie was here but then decided this weekend would be too soon. This morning Fed Ex came, Vince got the package and said “It’s for you and it’s heavy!” I couldn’t imagine what it was but it was these business cards. Addie was so happy when I showed them to her. I told her she could take some home to give to her friends.

Here’s what they look like as floss tags.

I think it will be fun to have a variety of pictures. Once I get other pictures that are worthy of becoming a floss tag, I’ll order more cards so each project will have a variety of pictures.

Now that my floss is “decorated”, I can get back to stitching! 🙂