Finishing a cross-stitch or emboidered bookmark (the lazy way)

Bookmarks are a common project for cross-stitch projects.  They are small, so those into instant gratification (or at least a lot faster than a massive design) and they can make useful little gifts.  But once you finish your work, how do you finish it off and make it look nice?  Even if you are the neatest stitcher in the world, the back of your work is going to look a bit messy.

Well to start with, it will depend somewhat on what you made your cross-stitch bookmark on.  In general, there are two options, ordinary material (either aida cloth or evenweave) or bookmark material (usually aida) which comes in set widths and is already finished on the long sides.  The Medieval garden bookmark bookmark used the later.  If you use the former, you need to finish all four sides

The downside of raw material edges is that it will fray over time.  The threads that run parallel with the cut edge only have to move a tiny bit and they are off the perpendicular threads and flapping freely in the wind.  This ends up looking a messy tangled mess which you don't want for your hard work!  One option is to deliberately fray the cut edge back a set distance (usually at least 1cm).  This means that the remaining parallel threads (relative to the cut edge) will have to travel a lot further to fall off.

Another method is to do some sort of overcast stitching to essentially tie the parallel threads in place.  An overlocking sewing machine, ordinary sewing machine or using overlocking hand stitch can all do this.

And there is the humble hem.  Or in other words, fold the fabric over and iron it to hold the fold in place.  My Medieval Garden bookmark instructions said to do this.  And since I had the ironing board out anyway (for a skirt I'm making- I hate having to iron clothes :P ) I dug it out.

Bookmark with top and bottom folded and ironed down (and then the edges folded under to have a neater finished product).  The felt is the right width for the bookmark but the wrong length so I cut it to size after taking this photo.

This project uses a separate piece of felt to make the back look neat, but if you were making the project up yourself you could plan on using a long enough length of material that you could fold the ends up to hide the back completely.  But there is still the issue of keeping the material there.

Well the instructions said to use a neat line of stitching.  But I hate doing plain hand sewing.  But then, inspiration struck!  I had some hemming tape squirreled away (it's great for making costumes quickly that only need to last a day or so).  It's essentially double sided glue that melts with the heat from your iron.

Cut the hemming tape to size so it covers your backing material.  For the bookmark below I also put a square under each tab at the ends of the bookmark to keep them in place.

Close up view- I ran three strips down the length of the backing and then a short strip at each end for luck

Carefully position your bookmark onto the backing (using a felt backing for this was great as the felt really caught the roughness of the tape).  Once everything is set, use your iron to melt the glue and set everything in place (10 seconds or so should do- if not, just iron it some more).

And that's it!  Five minute job, tops.  Extra tip, if you are like me and glue your back in place and THEN realise that you forgot to add the tassel to the cross stitch layer, it's much easier to separate the layers if you first iron them again to melt the glue.  Then once you've added your tassel, iron again to restick it.