Old cross stitch experiments

Today I want to share some of my old projects with cross stitches, because there’s so much you can do with this basic stitch. It’s fun to experiment and I hope this will inspire you to give it a try. I think many embroiderers started with counted cross stitch projects. This detail of my gorse fairies is the biggest piece I made, it took me almost 30 years to complete!

I also used cross stitch to embroider TAST on the spine of my TAST 2012 fabric book. Just 2 threads of stranded floss on Aida.

Instead of stitching on linen or Aida you can also use a different fabric. Gingham is a nice first step. I used 2 and 4 threads of stranded floss to stitch this Leo.

Here I used cross stitch to alter the look of the Gingham before I embroidered my rope. The cross stitches on this piece are done in cotton a broder.

Altering fabric with stitches is a lot of fun. This next experiment is cross stitch in cotton a broder on a patterned white fabric. The squares on the fabric made it easy to stitch.

My next sample is part of a fabric book page with different fabrics. Here I stitched a cross stitch border to secure the edge. I didn’t use any guidelines, just stitched the pattern eyeballing it. I only made sure all stitches were stitched in the same direction.

To experiment with stitches it’s good to look at the parts of the stitch. Cross stitch is just 2 crossed straight stitches. As long as they cross each other it’s a cross stitch, so they don’t have to be the same size and they don’t have to cross all in the same direction if you’re not working in counted work.  That’s just what I did on this detail of a fabric card. Again the thread is cotton a broder.

You can also use cross stitch to quilt. On this Teesha Moore inspired patch I played with the size and angle of the cross stitch in stranded floss.

It’s fun to stitch on paper instead of fabric. Here I stitched on thicker paper to make a word in my altered book. Embroidery is a nice combo with journaling!

Here I stitched on a photo. I used tape to secure my threads, knots would be too bulky to attach it to my journaling spread. I wrote about the making of this spread with lots of progress photos of the embroidery here.

In this last example I took the cross stitch in another direction. I replaced the straight stitch parts by buttonhole bars. So I stitched crossed buttonhole bars and added some normal cross stitches.

Just click the links if you want to read more about one of these projects.