I have spent a lot of time in museums studying embroidery, while researching my embroidery books. One very memorable day for me was seeing a very old cross-stitched textile. The crosses went every which way. It was a charming piece, and a revelation to me. The stitcher had not cared which way their stitches went, preferring instead to focus on the design itself. It did not detract from the piece. It was gorgeous. Ever since, I have wondered why contemporary cross stitchers are so caught up in the way their stitches cross.
A couple of days ago, I was reading a post in a Facebook group where someone wanted to improve upon their cross stitching. This is an admirable goal, and one I fully support. I always want to be improving my stitching.
I replied with the words above. I also put them on my Facebook page, and it generated a lot of very interesting discussion!
Other people replied with things like “this \ half cross should be first and then / half cross” (I probably have that around the wrong way), “they must all cross the same way”, and “it should sit on the fabric like this…” My immediate reaction was “Why?”
Now, there might be a very good reason as to their “why”, but they didn’t share that. Sometimes I wonder if the things we take as gospel have any good basis behind them. Do we just accept them because they were told to us by someone we respect and who is more knowledgable than us? How far back does this passing on of knowledge go before we find that it was just an arbitrary decision someone made generations ago?
Maybe there is a good reason. If so, I’d love to know what it is! Maybe it really does sit better that way. Maybe that method uses less thread. Maybe something else…
When I’m teaching, I really like to explain the WHY. You may have noticed this in my videos. I’m also not content to just accept the received wisdom about stitching and stitches. I like to test things out for myself. And so I’m thinking of testing out plain old simple cross stitches; the way they’re done, and the way they interact with the fabric threads.
Would this be interesting to you? Any suggestions for my variables?
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
Interesting thoughts Yvette. One of my bobbin lace friends often says: “There are no lace police”. I like that expression, puts a smile on my face.
Maybe the cross stitch direction is because of the way the stitches look when light shines on them? Stitching would look more even if the top cross stitches all go in the same direction. Like when you do satin stitch in Cotton perle for kloster blocks in hardanger, stitches look shinier for all the horizontal stitches, then if you turn the piece in the light, the other stitching looks shinier. Bit hard to describe in writing!
Hi Julie, yes, I perfectly understand what you are saying! And yes, the general consensus seems to be that it’s all to do with light and shine.
Hi Yvette, I usually cross my stitches all the same way and I do whole crosses most of the time. I think this is called the English method, while the Danish method works a row of half crosses and then back over the row to finish the crosses. I find working whole crosses makes them stand up a little bit, probably because the thread goes back under the stitch. A similar effect to the one you demonstrated in a recent video using running stitch and backstitch. The difference is subtle but I think it makes a difference especially on large areas of stitching.
Crossing the stitches all the same way affects the way the stitches catch the light, especially when using silk thread. I once deliberately crossed in the opposite direction to make some dragonfly wings stand out – again it is a subtle effect but when I am using fine threads on high count fabric the subtlety is important.
I once went down the rabbit hole of research of cross stitch methods! It is fascinating. YouTube/FlossTube is a great resource as many presenters explain in detail the how and why of what they do. That can then be followed up in other sources. Apart from Danish method and English method I learnt lots about full coverage, parking and cross country.
Sometime in my youth, I was informed that cross stitches with / tops were “the English way” and those with \ were the “Continental” way. Certainly Th. de Dillmont uses \. What about other early and influential textbooks and manuals. School influence would also be a factor. What did teacher training colleges teach?
Heyo! I agree with you so much. I’ve been taught “knots are bad”, and always felt shame for using them but I did it anyway. Then I learned (correctly or not) that this idea of never knotting anything was very American and I completely got over it! I almost always knot unless the piece will be affected (if it needs to lie flat or be seen in the reverse). Stitching for me is fun and an escape from the rules of life. If play wasn’t allowed, well what is the point in that? I’d have stopped stitching as soon as I started :p
Thanks Janet! I don’t think I’ll go a long way down this rabbit hole, because cross stitch isn’t really my thing, but I find these sorts of investigations interesting. And I want to encourage others to do their own investigations. It doesn’t have to be someone else *telling* us to do these things. We can work stuff out for ourselves! 🙂
Thanks Sue. Good thoughts!
Hi CaLynn, I use knots quite regularly, but only temporarily, and then get rid of them. I used to work as a picture framer, and when framed, knots make lumps, so I do try to avoid them. I’m glad that stitching is fun for you. Go you!
I don’t do cross stitch – I know my limitations – but I do needlepoint on canvas. Which is basically half-cross stitch, with decorative stitches for fun. Basketweave doesn’t distort the canvas; continental and half-cross do, and sometimes there’s no option. My first piece was Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and I did the flowers and their vase first. Then, for the table top, I reversed the direction of slant, and the distortion went away! Encouraged by that, I tried something else for the wall. The painted canvas I used had splotches of pale grey, yellow and green on the wall, which I didn’t like much. So, I continental-stitched every alternate row in pale yellow, as well as all the other bits that were yellow anyway. And the green and the grey fitted in nicely and weren’t too lurid: I like to think that they resemble reflections. I found that the yellow rows, slanting /, and the other rows, slanting \, reflected the light in interesting ways and also helped to keep the canvas nice and rectangular. Since then, and that was back in the 70s, I’ve tried to alternate the slant, either for background or, in the case of decorative stitches, to have one stitch going l-r in a biggish area and another going r-l. Or the same stitch: I did an alphabet sampler with each letter on a block. The letters were basketweave, all the same direction, but the background was mosaic and those blocks slanted l-r and r-l alternately, with a border around them which slanted the opposite way from the letters. It stayed straight, and looked more interesting. I know this isn’t your thing, but it’s a question of texture and of light, which we are all fascinated by. Thanks for an interesting post!
Thanks Deborah. That’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
My understanding that is it doesn’t really matter which way you cross your stitches as long as you do them all the same way. I would say that this applies to any kind of stitching: Always stitch your dove’s eyes in the same direction, always do a Smyrna cross with either the horizontal or vertical bar on top, etc.
No, there are no stitching police but I guess it matters if you want to submit a piece for judging at a fair or exhibition.
I first started doing cross stitch on my own and didn’t know anything. Then I lived in Denmark for a while and learned to do it in-hand (which I much prefer) and to do some half-crosses first and then go back to finish them, as described by Janet above. I didn’t know that anybody did it one full stitch at a time! I thought that whether you finish with / or \ on top was a simple matter of preference, and I like \ because I feel more comfortable with the way the thread goes as I stitch. Over the years I’ve developed habits that I feel help with keeping the stitches smooth and unfuzzy, and also nice and plump on top — I too have noticed that ‘folding’ the thread in the other direction makes it sit more nicely, so your video of the other day confirmed my thoughts. 🙂
Maybe it’s to allow more than one person to work on a piece? Without having thought to have a convention about it, my mother and grandmother (left handed and right handed, respectively) found that there were certain infelicities in the way their tent stitches meshed (or didn’t!).
Submitting for judging – yes, I agree that you’d need to do it all the same way for that!
Thanks for your thoughts, Jean! And glad my video helped. 🙂
Rachel, that’s an interesting idea. I can’t imagine allowing anyone else to work on one of my pieces though. I want that pleasure all to myself! 🙂
Thank you for this Yvette! My experiences are the same: as soon as you start to study historical needlework from 500-1000 year’s ago, the things that have been instilled in us as ‘the right way’ are a rather modern convention. Cross-stitch is a modern stitch, anyway! It is post-medieval and started to become really popular much later. At the moment, I am having fun investigating some of Ms Dillmont’s ‘rules’ (although it wasn’t really her, but the people who continued to publish her encyclopedia after her early death). I have even come across a modern paper on the translation of classical texts on textiles that can pin-point wrong translations to those famous Dillmont publications. A stark reminder that we should always concern ourselves with the ‘why’!
Thanks Jessica – great to have your thoughts!