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:

12
34

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

[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...

[kate_nepveu]

Ah, good point. I haven't taken big projects with me places before, so it hasn't been an issue, but yes, pink is not the desired goal!

[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.)

[kate_nepveu]

Nail clippers are a great tip! I haven't had trouble with airport security for any of those, but I'll keep it in mind.

[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.

[(Anonymous)]

It's like anything else: it depends on precisely how nasty a mood the TSA person you deal with is. My rule of thumb is, never take anything in your carry-on that you aren't willing to lose for good. People have had totally weird stuff confiscated, like the interchangeable tips to circular needles. I've definitely heard of people losing their circular thread cutters. Nail clippers I've never had a problem with.

[mme_hardy]

Oops, that was me.

[ailis_fictive]

I've never had a problem either, actually, but I did a fair amount of flying in the first few years after 9/11 and got *really* paranoid about what I'd carry because the early TSA was so very jumpy and inconsistent. At this point it's mostly habit - though in fairness, I'm pretty sure the round cutters actually are a large enough blade to be banned.

(Nail clippers in the very early post-9/11 era could be an issue if they had the nail file that pivots out. I think the theory was the file could be sharpened into a blade? I wish I was kidding.)