Yesterday I stuck the snowman ornament under running cold water in the sink and got him damp all over (not sopping wet). Then I stapled him to 5x4 inch stretcher bars which is the outside dimension of the scrap of 18 count canvas I stitched him on. If I'd put him on stretcher bars to stitch, I might not have needed to block him. No guarantees on that, though. Interlocking Goblein pulled him quite a bit out of true. Oddly, this stitch which I normally use in the thinner and more forgiving Impressions, pulled more using Caron's Snow than my more usual thread. The type and size of thread you use makes a difference in whether you need to block just like the stitch you used does.
I took a chance wet blocking this piece. You never know whether a thread is colorfast. In fact, cross stitchers who normally wash their background fabric both before and after stitching and who also wash their threads before stitching with them, deal with running colors all the time. I used a lot of synthetics which in my experience don't run. The red smile nylon thread was my biggest concern but it only ran a smidge and it isn't noticable in person although you can see it in the photograph.
This sat overnight and dried. I will reblock today as the lower right corner could be a little less prominent. But he's going to be much easier to finish as a square than a parallelogram!
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