SBQ, 11/29/2006 - Not Knots

How do you secure your thread when you begin a new one? Specifically, do you or have you ever used a waste knot?

I'm a loop starter (assuming I have an even number of strands of the same color). For blends and other single-strand stitching, I leave a tail which I then stitch over. And sometimes I'll weave a single strand under existing stitches before I start - typically I do this with backstitching. I've never used a waste knot.

Thanks for all the kind comments on my finishing adventures! It gives me courage to keep learning and trying new things...

I haven't been stitching much lately, after all. After finishing up the "Mom & Me" scrapbook for my mother's Christmas gift, I decided that Dad needed something similarly nostalgic. So I've put together a photo cube for him. I had a project card that suggested using a Styrofoam cube, but after having a miserable night with the cube, paper, and glue, I tossed the whole thing and cut my own cube out of foamboard. It was a bit more fiddly in the beginning of the construction process, but the finished product has nice clean lines and makes me quite happy! I couldn't find a lot of pictures of the 2 of us, though.....seems that Dad was always the photographer.....
I used:
1 - a pic taken when I was a few months old (top of the cube)
2- one of me at about age 5, standing next to Dad with a wild turkey he shot. A little icky, I know, but Dad will love it.
3 - us with some fish we caught.
4 - us acting cheesy by the campfire - Dad had just moved an entire TREE TRUNK (!) onto the fire, and was posing like a body builder. lol
5 - a posed shot of us in the hallway of my college dorm. (I overlapped this with the campfire shot - I didn't have a good quote or anything to write on that side of the cube, so I put 2 pictures on instead of just one)
6- the father-daughter dance at my wedding. Yeah, I'm going to make him cry.... *grin*

DH is playing Santa this weekend at a couple group homes for mentally/physically handicapped folks. Depending on how things work out, I might end up being Santa's chauffeur!! Maybe I'll throw some stitching in my bag, along with the digital camera......