Nancy L. Haydon

The following good habits will not guarantee you a wonderful masterpiece, but if you bear them in mind, you're unlikely to be disappointed by the appearance of your finished project.

1. Keep your stitching clean. This may seem obvious, but it is very easy to stain or otherwise mark your stitching without realising it. Keeping to a few rules should prevent this.

Firstly, I recommend always keeping your stitching wrapped up when you are not working on it. I like to keep each project in a separate clear plastic zip-folder. Not only will this prevent loss but it will project your work from any spilled drinks or settling dust.

Secondly, always make sure you wash your hands before stitching. Cover any small wounds with a plaster, and avoid greasy hand cream. Avoid eating, drinking and stitching at the same time. Otherwise, it is almost impossible not to drop crumbs or liquid onto your work. Give yourself proper meal breaks instead.

So -- what is the best thing to do if you do get a stain on your treasured work? Your best bet will be to consult a reference source to discover what is the best treatment for the particular stain -- different substances require different antidotes.

If your stitching has a generally grubby and/or greasy appearance, you can wash your work successfully, provided you pay attention to the correct method.

Immerse it gently into warm water with a little detergent added. Do not wring or rub any stained areas. Instead, just press the fabric gently between finger and thumb. Rinse well in cold water, then iron the back of your fabric when it is still just damp, padded with a thick towel on both sides.

2. Present your stitching beautifully. If you have spent many hours working hard to stitch a beautiful design, why spoil the finished product by presenting it in an unattractive way? Last month I received a lovely stitched card from a friend. Sadly, she had glued her picture onto the card with too much glue. There were noticeable blobs of the stuff showing through the fabric, and at one point, there was a bulge where a huge blob had settled behind the fabric. What a shame.

Another person I know stitched a huge picture of a dragon. It took her almost a year to complete this detailed work -- and apparently two minutes to discover an old chipped, gilt frame in her loft to surround it with. Not only that, but she had omitted to iron her finished work -- so it remained in the frame looking somewhat crumpled, and with a fold-mark still visible.

If you work hard to create a beautiful piece of work, you owe it to yourself to exhibit it beautifully. It can make a great difference to the finished effect. You will find many trouble-shooting tips for mounting your work in stitching magazines. If you want to try something completely new, do go ahead -- but remember to practise your technique on a piece of spare fabric first.

3. Keep the back of your work neat. We are all convinced that no one will see the back of our work once it's finished and framed. Therefore, we can be excused for loops and knots, and trails of thread across the back of the picture to link one stitch with another one on the other side of the design - right? Wrong!

I shall be always grateful to a needlework teacher who specially made a sampler of stitching mistakes to pass around our class at school. How we laughed at the balls of tangled thread and her lumpy creations. The laughter stopped when we started to make similar mistakes ourselves -- and it was the thought of that awful sampler that haunted us and kept us on the straight and narrow. We know we should not allow knots and loops to create their own three-dimensional life-force on the backs of our work.

If you think that no one will notice if you snake a piece of thread from one side of the design to the other, you are mistaken. Thread can easily be seen through the holes of the fabric, and the more the colour of the thread contrasts with that of the fabric, the more noticeable it will be.

Why wait until the next New Year's Eve to make resolutions? Resolve to be meticulous in your stitching NOW -- you'll feel proud of yourself as you realise WHY a little discipline is good for you...