How to get started with cross stitch

The lovely people at The World of Cross Stitch magazine sent me a cross stitch kit to try.  I’m now a regular knitter, and have tried my hand at embroidery (thanks to a kit I bought from Sublime Stitching), so cross stitch was a natural next step.

Actually, cross stitching is even easier than embroidery and knitting! You just stitch little x’s on grid-like fabric, et voila! A design.   You can either do “counted” cross stitch, which means that you count the number of stitches from your pattern and recreate it on plain fabric, or you can buy pre-printed kits.  I did a few practice stitches on some plain aida fabric and felt ready to tackle a new design after just a few minutes.

To be honest, I struggled a bit with the existing patterns I found online.   They just didn’t fit with my decor (which leans more modern than country/whimsical).  And since Vintage Savoir Faire is about rediscovering vintage crafts and adapting them for our modern lives … I decided to design my own!

I put together this design, using a vintage bird illustration and my GIMP graphical editor (Like photoshop, but free … I’m all about the free tools!)

Then I found a brilliant free online program, My Photo Stitch, where you can upload a photo, change a few settings, and it produces a cross stitch pattern for you.  It’s not perfect, but if you’re willing to improvise a bit, it is a great starting point.  I uploaded the design, and got back a detailed cross stitch design using 5 colors.  (You can see I’m bad at photo editing, so the area around around the bird is shaded … this showed up in the cross stitch pattern so I had to ignore those stitches.)

Then the stitching began.

I liked that cross stitching didn’t require a lot of concentration. It’s just a basic x-stitch, so it’s easy to do while watching TV or talking with a friend.

And finally, my finished design!

If you’re interested in trying to cross stitch yourself, here’s a visual tutorial on how to cross stitch by Stitch School.    And some inspiration for modern cross stitch by WallWork, Hello Sailor, and Feeling Stitchy.

I would like to see some more modern/alternative/edgy cross stitch patterns out there though! Know of any good resources? Let us know in the comments.