When you work with stranded embroidery floss (like DMC or Anchor cotton floss, stranded silks, and the like), it’s pretty standard procedure to separate the number of strands of floss, one at a time, from the whole thread of six, and then put the number you’re going to use back together again to stitch with them.

This is called stripping your embroidery floss, and I show you how to do that in this tutorial here.

Stripping your floss serves a purpose: it keeps the strands (if you’re using two or more) from twisting around each other, so that you get good and smooth coverage with every stitch.

Whether you’re doing counted work or surface embroidery – whether it’s cross stitch or stem stitch – stripping the floss makes a huge difference in the way your stitches look. It’s a good practice.

When I wrote about this thread organization system the other day, I made the comment that I like using precut threads hitched through a hole, because they allow me to pull out individual strands of floss without having to strip them from the rest of the threads (well, the comment was something to that effect, anyway). I don’t have to replace the unused portion of the strand. I can just pull out one tiny little thread at a time.

This garnered a bit of comment and a whole flood of questions via email, so I promised I would clarify.

And here’s the clarification of how this whole one-strand-at-a-time floss pulling trick works.