When I was a kid I was very thrifty with obtaining craft materials because I didn’t have the money to spend on buying new. As an adult, I’m lucky that I have the disposable income to spend on any craft materials I want or need but that thriftiness learnt as a child is still there and there are some things I continue to do to this day. Here are my tips for making the most of your craft materials:

• Embroidery hoops are probably the most expensive item of any embroidery project and although they may only cost a few pounds one way to make sure you can re-use them is in how you finish your embroidery project. If you are displaying your project in a hoop, finish the back in a way that means in the future if you don’t want that project on display any more you can take it out of the hoop and use the hoop for the next project. costs of an embroidery project finish your hoops so you can re-use them. This blog post outlines 4 ways to finish the back of an embroidery hoops - just avoid the gluing method if you want to use the hoop again in the future.

• Embroidery projects need fabric to stitch on. I regularly use old fabrics such as sheets, curtains and shirts that aren’t good enough to go to the charity shop. I cut around any stains or tears and make use of as much of the fabric as possible.

• Keep thread offcuts for use in future projects. There are two ways I keep thread offcuts, the first is if there is a long length of several strands left, I rewind this onto the thread bobbin I cut it from. For shorter lengths and single strands, I have a jar where I store these for when I need a tiny amount of a colour or for use in an abstract embroidery project.

• Store things well. There is nothing more sad than opening a bag of yarn and finding its been nibbled by moths. This has happened to me and although I tried to rescue as much of the yarn as possible the grainy deposits the moths left meant much of it was unusable. I now store all my yarn in sealable bags and have moth balls dotted around the storage boxes.

• Keep anything and everything! This is only a good tip if you have the space. That ribbon from around the Christmas cracker, a necklace that broke, buttons from a shirt that you had to send to the fabric recycling. They could all be used in future craft project.

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