I want to share with you a few secrets of cross stitch on felt with waste canvas and its pulled-out threads. What is important, the back side of the work will remain absolutely neat, without knots and pulled threads.

You need:

• base for embroidery, I decorated felted mittens
• needle with a sharp point, for tapestry, the one for embroidery on canvas will not do
• mouline, I used woolen
• scissors
• waste canvas, or you can use water soluble canvas, but a finished felted item doesn't like being wetted

At first, you need to tack the canvas to the base with contrasting threads with large stitches. Not only along the perimeter, but also to fix the centre. So the embroidery will be smooth and the canvas will not "run away":

Begin to embroider. Throughout the embroidery, make sure that the thread did not appear on the back side and was inside felt. Fasten the thread, but not with a knot — use a few small stitches. First, insert the thread in felt and hide the end of the thread inside:

Then make a very small stitch within a single square of the canvas and pull out the thread in a nearby square:

Therefore, make several stitches to firmly secure the thread. Stitches should be at the place where you are going to embroider, then they will be completely invisible:

Now you can embroider as usual. Follow that you did not accidentally grab a thread of the canvas, otherwise it will be problematic to remove it:

Fasten the thread with small stitches that are made between the crosses of the right colour:

Make 4-5 transitions the same way and cut off the thread.

When the stitches of embroidery reach the fixing stitches, remove them:

The embroidery is ready and it's time to remove the canvas. Pull out only transverse threads at fisrt:

Sometimes the thread is not removed with the first attempt, it is better not to pull it with force, otherwise the embroidery may be deformed. Try to pull it from another side, if not, then hold the stitches between your fingers and pull the thread with force:

You can now remove the transverse threads:

When I made the embroidery on the first mitten and removed the canvas, I decided to complement it and stitched on a small piece of canvas so that the squares coincided with the crosses:

And continued the embroidery:

And the embroidery is ready, with neat backside and no knots.

I hope that my tutorial will be useful for you. Good luck!