Creative Beading

How do you sew those pre-cut plastic canvas shapes?

This may be a silly question, but I have seen the pre-cut plastic canvas shapes in the store in shapes like hearts and stars and circles. They look cute enough to make a few ornaments for my tree, but I don’t see any instructions on them as to the correct way to sew yarn or metallic thread through them. Is there a specific way your supposed to thread the yarn through them to get the best possible look? Are there instructions to these somewhere that I missed? I do sew and crochet and knit so I am not totally without any craft background, but I wanted to make sure I brought out the best in these if I tried some. I was even thinking of adding small beads or sprinkling a little glitter on them after they’re done. Thanks.

I used to do these all the time! They do make good ornaments!

There’s several methods, but this is the one I prefer:

TIP: give yourself plenty of yarn to start with, you don’t want to have to tie on extra because it’s difficult to conceal the knot.

1. When you thread the yarn through the first hole, leave a “tail” and don’t bother tying a knot or anything. (you’ll just have to be careful not to pull the tail through while doing your first row.)

2. Begin sewing by weaving the yarn or thread in and out, every 3-4 horizontal holes. so that when you reach the end of the first row it will look something like this: —–(yarn)[][][][](plastic canvas) —- [][][][] (you get the idea lol)

3. When you reach the last hole in the row, sew back to the beginning, sewing the opposite way, so the en result should look like: ————————————-[] (no plastic canvas showing on either side accept in the last hole on the end, since there was no way to double that one, but we’ll fix that in the last step.)

4.when you get back to the starting point of the row, just drop your thread down one row, and start the process again.

This last part can be done one of two ways:

If your thread isn’t terribly thick:
then you should have enough room so that on the last row you can go from left to right, then right to left, then take it once more left to right, wen you get to the last square of the last row, begin sewing from the bottom up to the top, this will fill in that last square in every row that didn’t get it’s double stitch, (told you we’d fix it!) when you get to the last square of the top row, make another tail, and tie it to the starting tale, this will be the loop you use to tie it on the tree.

If your yarn is too thick for that method:
On the next to last row sew once left to right, and on the last square drop it down to the last square of the last row, and whip stitch the 2nd to last and last rows until you get to the first square of the last row, then sew from left to right like you did all the other rows.when you get to the last square of the top row, make another tail, and tie it to the starting tale, this will be the loop you use to tie it on the tree.

There’s another method that involves doing the whole canvas left-right top-bottom, then turning around and doing it the opposite way once you reach the last square in the bottom row, it’s essentially the same concept, but I found that it always took longer, and was easier to mess up on (too much yarn and canvas messing with your eyes lol)

good luck and have fun! this is a neat project to do.
After some practice you may even get brave enough to try doing patterns in different colors, i.e. a poinsetta shape where the outside is done in red, and the center is done in yellow. My grandma was good at that, I was never that good lol

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