Crafting with arthritic hands

[Miasnana]

Anyone got any advice about using support gloves when doing cross stitch? Even holding a small hoop is very difficult but I love making small cross stitch flowers as thank you gifts for friends. Any advice gratefully accepted.

[Pippy25]

Hello Miasnana, lovely to hear you are trying to do your cross stitch and how nice to be doing this for friends too. Are they a full glove you are wearing? As you can get ones which are three quarter ones that allow the tops of your fingers to be free from the glove and hopefully give you that bit of flexibility to hold the needle and hoop. Or if possible pace yourself and say I will do this for x amount of minutes and stagger the sewing so you are doing it in bite size time, rather than for lengthier periods.I'm sure there are lots of ways of getting around this and keep doing what you are doing! Good Luck x

[Gnarli]

Would it help to have a table clamp to hold the hoop for you? I have also seen a free standing hoop holders. They offer these on Ebay, Etsy, Ravelry etc

[Miasnana in reply to Gnarli]

I have just ordered a table clamp on Amazon. had trouble finding one that didn’t come from China!

[Gnarli in reply to Miasnana]

Non Chinese goods are never easy to find, are they? I hope the clamp does what it promises and that you enjoy many more years of embroidery

[sylvi]

I use fingerless compression gloves and i find them marvelous.xx