Keep Track of a Growing Canvas Stash

For all of us who buy canvases quicker than we stitch...

I wish I were the type of girl who bought a canvas, finished it, then bought another one and finished that, and so on. But I'm not a one-in, one-out type of girl. So, with that in mind, today I wanted to share some tips on how to keep your stash organized in a way that isn't time-consuming or tedious.

Depending on your medium, you’ll need a blank page to start. I find this to be much easier on something dynamic than a needlepoint journal. In this case, I use Notability, a notes app on my iPad. I like this list to be handwritten, but typing it out in your iPhone notes section would work just fine.

Sections are split out as follows:

WIPs

In the WIPs section, I will track my progress by giving each project a percentage of completion. This is rough math I do in my head. For example, if the background is complete, it’s probably 37% there. If all I have left to do is beading, it’s near 92%. You get the drift. These are completely arbitrary and keep me honest. Usually, I will have about three WIPs going at a time.

Kitted

I think it’s important to know what you have threads for. I will rank these on excitement usually #1 to #3. These rankings show me what I will start next and have to look forward to when I complete my current WIPs. Usually, I have about 5-7 projects kitted at the time, but right now it’s a bit more because my LNS was doing 20% off everything in the store including threads so I went “hog wild” as my lovely mother would say.

Needs to be Kitted

This is the better part of my stash and where most my canvases live. I subscribe numbers of excitement to these canvases as well usually #4 to #10 depending on how many I have in the pipeline. I will lightly highlight the ones I should kit next.

To Be Sent Off → At the Finisher

Once I am finished stitching a project, it lands in the “To Be Sent Off” list. I will also note where I plan to have it finished. After it’s sent off, I move it to the “At the Finisher” bucket so I never “lose” a project. I will also make a note of the finisher details, who ultimately does the finishing.

Here is what mine looks like right now:

WIPs:

• Lady with a Fan - 6% (in WIP purgatory currently)

• Negroni Canvas - 78% (also in WIP purgatory currently)

• Crocodie Lycette - 58%

• Newport - 61%

• RTA x ECS 86%

Kitted:

• Bergdorf Box (2)

• Sapphire

• North Carolina Stamp (1)

• Cartier Nutcracker

• LAX Tag (3)

• Washington Sq Park (6)

• Washington Square Park (4)

• Cafe Du Flore (5)

Needs to be kitted: I’ll spare you but there is north of 20 on that list. Recently made it into an canvas library for substack here:

To Be Sent Off:

• Eyeglass case (Red Thread Atelier?)

• Emerald (Rittenhouse?)

• Bemelmans Ornament

• Morocco Ornament

• I Sodi Ornament

At the Finisher: Nothing because I just got a bunch of stuff back, YAY!! Including this door hanger which you can read all about below.

Let me know if this was helpful or how you do it.

See you in my next one,