cross-stitching 101

[kate_nepveu]

Revised from a comment I posted a while ago (in the last thread on the first page of comments here), prompted by tomorrow's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell post (no, really! Cross-stitching, slash, and a man wearing a ship on his head, all coming to a Tor.com near you.). Someone asked if I'd taught myself to cross-stitch, and I said I had when I was a kid: "Pretty much your threshold for 'looks good!' is 'all stitches go in the same direction' and 'no big lumpy knots on the back,' so it's pretty simple. => There are bunches of tips for making it look _great_ to close inspection, but start with the basics and see if you like it."

Here are the basics that I came up with on the fly, slightly cleaned up.

You can either find a pattern you like and get the cloth and thread you need for it, or you can buy it all together in a kit. (These days kits are harder to find in general craft stores.) There are also two kinds of kits, the kind with blank fabric and a chart ("counted cross stitch") and the kind with the picture printed on the fabric that you stitch over ("stamped cross stitch").

If you're assembling stuff to make a pattern you've found, I'd recommend starting with Aida fabric, because it's simpler. You want a tapestry needle, because it's blunt; if you're using the most common Aida size, which is 14, try size 24 or 26. And you want embroidery floss, the kind that comes with six plies or strands (for stitching on 14 Aida, you'll want two of those strands); DMC is the biggest name here, and Anchor is also a big name in the UK.

You'll probably also find it easiest, to start, to have a hoop or frame to hold the fabric. A kit may come with a hoop, and hoops are generally the easiest to find in general craft stores. (There are lots more options, but: basics.)

The actual stitching is super simple. Aida fabric is all nice neat little squares with holes at each corner. Push your needle up through a hole from the back, then bring it down through the hole that's diagonal from the one you started with, making the bottom part of the X. If you think of your square's corners numbered like below, you could, for instance, come up at 3 and come down at 2:

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If you're doing a row of stitches, it's easier and faster to do all the bottom parts first. So bring your needle up at 4--it's part of the same block--and then make another diagonal stitch, until you're done that row in your pattern:

/ / / / /

ETA: when you're starting off, leave an inch or two of thread on the back side of your fabric, when you pull it through from 3. Then, when you go down at 2 and up and 4, you'll make a straight line down on the back: before you pull it taut, tuck the inch or two of thread through it, so it's trapped underneath when you pull the stitch taut. You can then do the same thing for the rest of the row, and you've safely secured the start of your thread without a lumpy knot. When you get to the end of your thread, use your needle to run it through a row of stitches on the back for the same effect. Here are some pictures I found on a super-quick search.

At the end of the row, come up again at 4 but this time cross the stitch by making a diagonal in the opposite direction (go down at 1), then repeat:

\ \ \ \ \

Et voila! You now have, err, five neat little X's of thread. (You can stitch in whatever direction you want, as long as it's always the same; I just used that example because it's how I do it and made it less likely I'd mis-state something accidentally.)

Here are some things that affect a project's complexity and difficulty, which you may want to consider when picking something to try--you know your own tolerance for diving in the deep end!

• size
• number of colors
• whether those colors are mostly in their own areas (easier) or whether they are all mixed up (harder)
• besides cross-stitch and backstitch (used to outline: it's the brown in the polar bears), does it look like it uses any other stitches? beads?
• ETA: metallic threads (high difficulty level)

There are lots of tutorials and things online, but they seemed to have pretty wildly varying levels of information, so I figured I'd make my own attempt at what I thought the real basics were.

Questions? Disagreements? Demand for a 201+ discussion? (I was planning to save that until my next finish, or at least until I need advice on it, honestly, but we can set up a dedicated comment thread here if you all want.)

Comments

[ceb]

A small amount of regionalisation: at least in the UK, Anchor is also a big, reliable floss manufacturer (DMC and Anchor are the big two). Also 'kitty-corner' means nothing to me as a British English speaker (I would say 'diagonally across from').

When you're talking about own areas vs mixed up, I would emphasise that patterns with just a cross or two on their own here and there are really very awkward, much more than you might expect if you've never tried cross-stitch before.

Maybe add something about how to start and stop stitching? I think that's the only thing that strikes me as missing from this, it's a really nice intro otherwise :-)

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you!

Let me ponder how to best do start-stop.

[mme_hardy]

Away knots are God.

[yhlee]

Thank you for this!

I actually used to stitch one X at a time, rather than //// then \\\\, until someone told me I was doing it wrong. (It's curious that my mother didn't correct me, but now that I think of it, cross-stitch is one of the few fabric arts she didn't do or did very seldom.)

I would love to see a 201 discussion. Especially on using beads. I have seen gorgeous-looking kits but am not sure I am up to something as fiddly as beads. (I used to do a little bead-weaving and then regular old beading on tiger-tail, but my coordination is even worse now than it used to be.)

(Also, am longing to do bookmarks, but it's going to be hard to eke out time for even that until December, the way this month has been going. But, bookmarks! :D )

[thistleingrey]

It's only "wrong" to do an X at a time because it uses up more thread.

[ailis_fictive]

To be super-pedantic (sorry! I think of cross-stitch thread paths like little logic puzzles that get me a neat finished object at the end)...depends how you're working one-X-at-a-time. There's two ways; either you're leaving more thread behind the work or you get an uneven surface

The short-thread-path way to do one X at a time results in the top thread on each X pointing in a different direction -

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such that the thread goes 1-4, then 3-2, then on the next stitch 3-2, then 1-4.

I don't generally call any approach to crafting "wrong" as long as you're happy with the results you're getting, but I think this surface looks objectively "worse" than one where the top thread is always going 3-2, and to get that you have to set for the second stitch by going from 2 on your first stitch (which is the same hole as 1 on your second stitch) to 4 on your second stitch - a diagonal under the fabric, which uses more thread.

(this may be well beyond the 201 level, honestly, but...really, this is how I think when I cross-stitch, and except for thread-ends my backs tend to be obsessively neat little squares.)

[kate_nepveu]

Okay, I declare this the 201 thread.

Like thistleingrey says, that's not wrong, it's just less efficient; for some things, you have to make a single X at a time--I'm currently using variegated thread, and you have to for that.

Beading: only done once, on those Christmas ornaments. Here's what it was like:

Very fine sharp needle, lots of little beads. I put the beads in a little flat dish with short straight sides--it was meant for bread oils+seasonings, I believe. Thread the very fine sharp needle with the thread specified by the pattern, come up through the fabric, then stab the needle through the bead and come down in a regular half cross stitch. Sometimes you would then make the other half of the cross stitch through the bead--I think the little silver ones in this big picture may have been full cross-stitches, to keep them straight and not diagonal.

I'm afraid it was moderately fiddly, and I dropped more beads than I care to admit.

Bookmarks! Do you have ones in mind?

[yhlee]

I spotted these: right now I need pretty colors in my life. I might get faster fulfillment just going to Hobby Lobby and seeing what they have, though.

Also, if anyone has recs for cross stitch patterns that are less floral all the time, I'd be all for that. Knots and abstract patterns I can deal with, but I'm having an allergic reaction to all the flowers. (No one's fault, but my mom sends me like 10 photos a day from her iPad of flowers. I'm getting my fair share!)

(Okay, I admit looking for a gun cross-stitch, but most of the ones I found were not appealing to me.)

Other 101 stuff

[mme_hardy]

Don't pull the thread tight. This is easy to do because your hands tense up, but it makes your life more difficult if you have to (gulp) unpick, and can even deform the fabric. Snug is good, taut is bad.

Some people prefer to work with the fabric held loosely in the non-working hand. Some people prefer hoops. Try both, and see which works for you. Cheap wooden hoops will make you cry; get the cheap plastic ones instead.

You *will* have to unpick work, and that's just part of the gig, just as unravelling is for knitting and crochet.

If you're working from a chart, photocopy it. Every time you finish a row, draw a line through it on the photocopy. Makes navigation way, way easier. (If you prefer to highlight a row, that's fine, too.)

Start from the center. This will help keep you from wandering off the edge of your fabric. The pattern will usually have the center marked. Find the center of your fabric by folding it in quarters.

Blunt scissors will also make you cry. Fiskars are often cheap and sharp.

Oh! Everybody will tell you to do this, but you'll skip it because it's boring. Don't skip it. When you cut the floss, separate *each individual thread* from the other. Then lay the threads back on top of each other: two threads, three, four, whatever. Separating the threads in the floss completely, then reassembling them really cuts down on the tangling.

Re: Other 101 stuff

[kate_nepveu]

Great tips, though I left them out as maybe 111. =>

I highlight to-be-stitched in one color and then finished over in a different color.

Re: Other 101 stuff

[mme_hardy]

I think "Photocopy the chart" is 101, because it never occurred to me that you were allowed to mark up the chart. Sacrilege!

[rushthatspeaks]

The 101 tip which would have saved me the most time as a tween:

the inclusion of metallic thread in a pattern ups the difficulty exponentially. Metallics are terrible to work with and require experience and confidence. I usually put them in after the rest of the pattern is already finished.

[kate_nepveu]

Oooh, yes, excellent point.

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

I'm much more of a freehand embroidery kind of person, but a couple things I would say is that I was taught to start a pattern by working the lightest color first, then the next lightest and so on to the darkest. The reason for this is when you're working the darker threads you'll be able to tell if you can see a thread, say, jumping behind the fabric from one spot to another, through the fabric. Black outlines and french knots come last. (Find a vid to watch to learn how to do french knots, half the pictures I've seen are just wrong.)

You can tell an experienced stitcher from an inexperienced by the back of their project, not the front- the more practiced you get, the neater and cleaner the back will be.

Also, regarding tangling, some people see it as cheating but you can get nice little resin-applicators for very cheap to run the thread through, and then it won't tangle and breaks less. And if you want to take a project on a plane, get one of those necklace cutters, a pendant with the sharp parts on the inside edge, also very cheap and not a weapon.

[kate_nepveu]

I also do lighter first because I find that pulling lighter through holes with existing dark threads gets darker fuzz on the lighter colors, though if I were working with different floss that might be less of a problem.

(This was kind of a pain when I did the polar bears, because then it was white-on-white which I hate, which is why I gridded those even though they were little.)

You mean things like Thread Heaven for tangling? Yeah, it's great, and I'm told it's critical for metallics, though why would anyone say it was cheating . . . ?

I've taken small scissors on planes, though I do also have the thread cutters, somewhere, and should probably find them again if I'm going to be stitching around the kids more . . .

[ailis_fictive]

I actually leave the very lightest colors for last when possible, because I work large projects over long time-spans in a variety of environments, sometimes without being careful about the condition of my hands...

...so if I work white or very pale colors first, they are often tan/grey by the time I'm finished. And since the reds often aren't set very well, there's a limit to how enthusiastically you can wash the finished product to get the whites back to white without them ending up pink instead...

[ailis_fictive]

Oh, and on the thread-cutting front, may I sing the praise of nail clippers? They go nicely through both thread and airport security, and won't poke holes in your bag (or project) if tossed in without a case/cover, like pointy embroidery scissors will.

(Airport security has been known to have issues with the round thread cutter pendants, because they're basically a round razor in a protective case...that can be taken apart.)

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

Possibly only my grandma thought it was cheating.

And my pendant can't, actually, be taken apart any way I can see, and I've taken it on planes (also works for yarn!) but I suppose that would depend on the airport.

[readingtheend.pip.verisignlabs.com]

Ooo, that is an excellent tip. I'm going to try it with my current pattern.

[saoba]

Fray-check, or whatever the kids are using these days to keep the fabric edges from going to bits, would go on my materials list. When photocopying charts, don't hesitate to blow them up, some companies make the charts rawther small. Two paper clips and a sheet of blank paper can be laid over a chart to keep your place, just move it down line by line as you go.

Years ago I took myself for an eye exam. When asked why I was there that day I explained my near vision seemed to be going downhill. Doctor nodded, asked my age (32), asked what age my mother and grandmothers went into glasses (late 40s all around). Doctor asked what count fabric I was stitching.

I had not mentioned cross stitch and pointed that out. Doctor gave me a grin and said that the upsurge in counted cross stitch was bring in women for vision correction 10-15 years before their family history might suggest. He thought that close, fine hand work was making women more aware of changes in their vision.

I said "Huh. 28 count, mostly." Doctor nodded and looked pleased with himself.

[kate_nepveu]

That's hilarious about the doctor.

Fray-check still exists, though I've never used it. I used to just put masking tape on the edges, but with the current project I tried folding over the edges and whip-stitching them, which seems to work okay. (I'm not really worried that the masking tape is going to corrode the project somehow over the decades, but I did feel vaguely that I ought not iron it, and that made getting the creases out of the last project more difficult than it had to be.)

[mme_hardy]

After I bought a serger, *everything* got serged. Before that, hand whip-stitching (without folding over, just a rough stitch over the raw edge) is actually very fast.

[readingtheend.pip.verisignlabs.com]

Where to get patterns from: Etsy is an excellent source! Last year I acquired a cross-stitch pattern from Etsy for cross-stitch Avengers, which I made into a pillow for my brother-in-law. Maybe $4 for the pattern?

Also, my public library has a service called Zinio by which I have access to a delightful ?British? cross-stitching magazine called Cross-Stitcher, and they have a whole bunch of patterns every month.

I made a cross-stitch bib for my godmother's son when I was eight years old and have been cross-stitching ever since. It is wonderfully soothing. Trichotillomania runs in my family, and I like to think that cross-stitching is scratching that itch for me. :p

[kate_nepveu]

My local B&N used to get that _Cross-Stitcher_ magazine and it did have a pretty good range of patterns (I say "used to" because the one nearest me closed and I haven't checked the next-closest one yet). Hmm, they have a digital edition now too; if I wouldn't be cluttering up the house, maybe I should ask for one for Christmas, since I am so hard to buy for . . .

Yay craft as therapy!

[mme_hardy]

If you want exquisite patterns, see the Australian magazine Cross-Stitch and Beading. Bonus: many patterns of Australian fauna and flora.

Unfortunately, the current issue preview may be (I'm not sure) problematic. Edit: I say "may" because I don't know how attempts to faithfully reproduce Japanese art fit in.

http://www.jilloxtonxstitch.com/sample1.htm

http://www.jilloxtonxstitch.com/sample90.htm