This past week I needed to make my husband a keychain.  You see, it was his birthday and the last present he bought me was this keychain from NASA.  It is now a bit of a joke in the family.  Some friends suggested I make him one for his birthday.

His keychain was solar powered.  I tried to mimic that by using glow in the dark yarn.  It works surprisingly well.  I wouldn’t want to use this yarn on a very big project though.  It smells funny.

I stitched this using plastic canvas.  I had a sheet in my stash.  Mine was about 10″ X 12″ and cost less than a dollar.  I cut out two identical pieces because I wanted the keychain to look nice on both sides.  We may live in Husker country now but once a Sooner, always a Sooner.

I thought I’d work up a little tutorial on how to work with plastic canvas.  It is really easy to do, inexpensive, and something the kids can do as well!

The only supplies you need are:

• plastic canvas
• tapestry needle
• yarn

Cut your plastic canvas to the size you want for your project.

When you do your own project, you’ll want to start in the far left corner.  I started in a spot where it would be easier to show on the tutorial.

Leave a tail of yarn as your thread the yarn up through one of the holes.

As you work your stitches, you can place your tail along the back so it gets caught in the stitches.

Work diagonally across the row.

This stitch is called the continental stitch.  It is the easiest and most common stitch used on plastic canvas.

On the bookmark, I did the letters using cross stitch.  Same principle, you just cross back over the stitch you made to make an “x”.

Continue working across your rows until finished.  Now you’re ready to work the whipstitch.

To work the whipstitch, work up through an edge stitch.  Wrap your yarn around the edge and come back up through the same hole.

Wrap your yarn around the edge and then come up through the next hole.  Continue until finished.