{"id":9897,"date":"2020-05-30T07:26:27","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T21:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/?p=9897"},"modified":"2020-06-01T07:45:04","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T21:45:04","slug":"cross-stitch-and-the-way-the-stitches-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/2020\/05\/30\/cross-stitch-and-the-way-the-stitches-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"Cross stitch and the way the stitches cross"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I replied with the words above. I also put them on my Facebook page<\/a>, and it generated a lot of very interesting discussion!<\/p>\n

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?”<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Would this be interesting to you? Any suggestions for my variables?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embroidery-musings","category-embroidery-stitches","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9897"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9902,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9897\/revisions\/9902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}