The cross-stitching thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, I have recently discovered a new hobby and thought maybe this would be a good place for people to share tips and info. I’m currently xstitching a baby announcement project, which I am hoping to complete before the baby actually arrives (early February).

Anyway, does anyone have any thoughts or interesting tips to share? Currently I am trying to figure out the difference between the regular cross stitch and the basketweave stitch. A few sites I’ve seen suggest that the basketweave stitch is nicer, because it results in a better look on the reverse side of the project. Is this something I would use for all stitches on a project, or just masses of the same color?

Also, does anyone have any good ideas for framing a project? I’m not really sure how to go about it.

2

Could you describe the difference between the regular and the basketweave? I learned to cross stitch from my mother and I don’t really know all the technical terms. I’m probably doing everything wrong! :wink:

I’m working on a pattern of flowers which was intended to be a bell pull, but I didn’t want a bell pull, so I kind of cut-and-pasted the pattern to make a rectangular picture I can frame. It’s extraordinarily complicated and probably won’t look at all like I thought when it’s done. I enjoy the process more than the product, honestly.

I’ve only framed one project, and I just bought a picture frame with a precut mat. I stretched the fabric flat (touched it up a little bit with a warm iron through a towel on the reverse) and taped it around the edges to the back of the mat. Then I closed the frame up normally. My mom sometimes puts a piece of cardboard in to make sure the fabric is right up against the glass.

3

Oops, I misread this part. We’ll have to wait for someone else to come along and explain this! :slight_smile:

4

I’m familiar with basketweave as a needlepoint stitch. If my understanding is correct, basketweave is good because it makes for a flatter canvas with less distortion, which is desirable when you make the canvas into something else.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any needlework, tho, since I don’t have the eyesight to do it anymore. :frowning:

Robin

5

If you saw the back side of my work when I used to cross stitch, you’d freak out. In my opinion, as long as it doesn’t make a lump in the fabric, who cares what the back looks like?

If you don’t want them to look, after you stretch the fabric to mount it, put brown paper on the back so they can’t see… or use one of those sticky things you can buy to mount needlework. You’re the one who will be looking at this the most - and your child. Make the front the best looking as you can with even stitches, and let the back take care of itself. As you work, you’re going to end up being neater than you think you will.

I don’t cross-stitch anymore because I can’t see those tiny stitches these days without ending up with a headache.

Congratulations on your upcoming arrival.

6

Well, I don’t do much cross-stitch (it drives me nuts), but I do a lot of needlepoint, which is almost identical in execution (except you don’t have to go over each stitch twice)

In needlepoint there are three techniques which form a diagonal stitch, and you have the same techniques available in x-stitch

All techniques go from the bottom to the diagonal top on top of the canvas.

Half-cross (what you probably use) Behind the canvas, go down one and start the next stitch to the right of the previous stitch. The thread forms a short vertical line on the back of the canvas. When you get to the end of a line, turn the canvas and repeat. You work the line from left to right. BTW, half-cross just doesn’t work on most needlepoint canvas, but isn’t a problem on cross-stitch fabric.

Continental: Behind the canvas, go down one and over two to the left so the next stitch starts one space to the left of the current stitch. The thread forms a diagonal line on the back of the canvas one space high and two spaces wide. When you get to the end of a line, turn canvas, etc.) You work the line from right to left(included for completeness, you probably wouldn’t use this for cross-stitch)

Basketweave: Behind the canvas, go down two spaces. and start the next stitch diagonally to the right and down. The thread forms a long vertical line. When you get to the end of the line, don’t turn the canvas. Instead, do the first stitch on the next diagonal line (at the same end that you are currently on) then go across two spaces behind the canvas to start the next stitch up and to the left of the previous stitch, forming a horizontal line on the back of the canvas.

In other words, you work the lines first in a diagonal going down and to the right, then in a diagonal going up and to the left. (With cross-stitch, I would turn the canvas a 1/4 turn and do the second round of stitches in the same manner)

When you finish, the back of the canvas has a pretty basketweave effect(with a tendency to be messy where two colors meet).

I don’t know about cross-stitch, but basketweave has these advantages for needlepoint: it’s faster and it doesn’t distort the canvas as much (and it looks cool on the back). It does tend to use more thread.

Does that make sense? I recommend trying it on a scrap before doing a project in it. Once you get the hang of it, it’s really easy to do.

7

Yeah, unless you’re doing a towel or something where the back is gonna show, I say screw the technique. No one will see the back (although sometimes dark threads will show through the canvas, so you don’t want to be completely unmindful of odd threads zooming all over the back of the work). I’ve seen some lovely mounting thingies that have the slightest bit of padding so the canvas sticks out a bit. That looks nice when you’re framing it without glass. Perhaps it doesn’t serve any purpose when you’re framing with glass.

This is a beautiful and thoughtful thing to do for that new baby! I cross-stitched a few little things using tearaway canvas on a few onesies, for my little guy. They were really cute (although the back of the work is, predictably, pretty ugly).

8

Hmm, thanks for the advice. I may try the basketweave, but as most of you say – who’s going to see the back anyway!?

I notice a few of you have mentioned stretching the fabric after I’m done with the project. Erm… how exactly would I go about doing that?

And thanks for the compliment, Cranky. I like the idea of cross stitching on some baby clothes! Maybe I’ll get around to that once this fricka-fracka-E(#) announcement project is completed. :slight_smile:

9

My mom is a very avid cross-stitcher. She has made baby announcements for both my kids, and a wedding announcement for me as well, and she’s doing one for my sister on linen, which is HARD by the looks of it. The backs of all her projects are amazingly neat - but she’s kinda anal about that.

She has all her gift stuff professionally matted and framed. She gets a special UV (I think - I’ll ask her if you want) glass which won’t allow the sunlight to fade the fabric. That might be a good idea if the item is hung where sunlight would fall on it.

I have also seen a CDROM for making your own xstitch patterns from pictures, which intrigued me. You could scan a picture and it would make the pattern and match the tones in the picture to the correct floss color numbers. Neat.

10

Congratulations MsWhatsit!

I think that the less knots you have in the back, the flatter your project will lay against the backing. The suggested way to avoid knots when introducing new thread is to leave a long enough trail of thread at the end that is “tacked down” by the first three or four stitches.

If you go to Michael’s or Hobby Craft, or any other craft store you should be able to find stretcher frames. It’s unfinished (softer) wood frames that you can stretch your fabric over and fastened down in the back with staples, glue gun, etc. If you use a stretcher frame, you need to find an outside frame that accomodates it. You can find those, too, at a craft store. The one plus side of using a stretcher frame is that knots in the back wouldn’t be an issue. If the outside frame does not have a backing, you can simply use felt or recycle a brown paper grocery bag.

Good luck!

11

How to

12

Thanks for the advice, all. I’m now contemplating mounting and framing my own project, by mounting the needlework on foam board, lacing the back together, and then matting it into a frame. Now all I have to do is find the materials – I am thinking of getting the frame at IKEA, because they have good ones. I assume I could get matting at a crafts store, like Jo-Ann Fabrics?

I’ve nearly completed the baby announcement project, and am about to embark on my next project. I just bought all like 32 colors of floss for it today. I found a picture of it online here, if anyone is interested. I think it’s going to be quite time-consuming, but probably rewarding. Gad, this is like an addiction.

13

I don’t do so much cross stitch lately. This one - http://www.twdesignworks.com/Designs/cas.html took about 5 years to complete, and as much as I love it, it was time to move on. Now I tat and do Hardanger primarily. I’ve also started this one - http://www.twdesignworks.com/Designs/uni.html - maybe I’ll finish it eventually.

I do the basketweave thing when I’ve got larger sections of the same color to do. It uses a little more thread, but it is faster, and the back does look cleaner.

My advice, when working move your hoop every hour or so, and the ones with the metal hoop you pinch and then release into a plastic outer ring will hold tighter than the old type that that you screw to tighten the outer ring.

It saves a lot of time and frustration to organize your thread near the beginning of a project. For smaller projects I punch holes in index cards and then mark them with both the thread name or DMC number and the symbol of that thread in the picture.

For bigger projects I use those opaque plastic boxes and wrap the floss around little plastic cards. You can draw the symbol and write the DMC number on the side of the card. I store the cards in order by number. It’s also good to start new cards for color combinations you use frequently. You can just wind equal lengths of each floss color around them and use the symbol. When I finished the dragon and moved onto the unicorn it made things really easy because I already had 2/3 of the floss organized and ready to go, so I didn’t accidentally buy more than I needed.

Also, if you are working in two strands of the same color, instead of threading your needle with two separate strands, fold one strand in half and then thread the needle. When you start stitching you can just pull the thread through the loop on the back and secure it without having to run extra threads all over the place.

Finally, the back does matter. If you get too much thread, or knots everywhere it can distort the fabric, and darker threads run across the back can make the front look dirty. I never run thread over more than 2 squares if there is a break in the design (where the fabric shows through on the front), and I try not to run more than 3 or 4 blocks across if I can’t tuck them under existing stiches on the back, because it’s really easy to catch those bigger loops on things and pull the whole thing out of shape.

14

If you want to get really picky about technique (and I always am), you should never skip more than a single stitch when working in a block of color. Example: in XXXXxXXXX it is acceptable to skip stitch x and continue in color X. However, in XXXXxxXXXX, you must tie off the floss before xx and start again two stitches later.

Never EVER use a knot to begin or end a color block or piece of floss. When you begin your first / of a color, leave a long tail on the back of the fabric. Catch that under the upstroke leading to the next /. Once you know the hold is good, trim the tail close to the upstroke, but not so close that it can slip out. A starting catch should only go under one stitch. Finish a block or piece of floss by running the end of the floss under three (never more, never less) stitches on the back of the piece.

If your piece is large, consider a scroll frame instead of a hoop. It’s bulkier to carry, but you’ll be glad in the long run, as your work space is larger and you don’t have to worry about your fabric tension changing every time you move the hoop.

Before framing your work, be sure to wash the piece in a sink of cold water and dry it flat on a towel. This removes any skin oil and dirt left over from when you were working. You may not be able to see it now, but it’s there and can become visible over time. The piece should be stretched as tightly as possible without distorting the stitches inside the frame. If there are any wrinkles, the piece will be unattractive in the frame and will look baggy and all your work will have been wasted. Most fabric/craft stores sell a product in a spray can that you can spray on the stretched edges to tighten them further after you’ve stitched them over the backing board.

Cross stitch is one of the only things in my life where I really do pay attention to all of the rules and try to make it perfect. Who cares what the back looks like? I care what the back looks like, because when it’s neat, I know I did the job well. Mom always told me that a piece of embroidery wasn’t good unless you couldn’t tell the back from the front, and I still try to live up to that. Also, if you want to enter your finished product in any kind of competition (county fairs, etc.) the back must be neat and exposed, as it’s one of the primary judging elements.

But I’m a big priss about this stuff. :slight_smile: Have fun no matter how you do the job.

15

Wow, you guys have some great advice. I am definitely going to start organize my thread using cards like that – right now it’s sort of just in a plastic box, loosely divided by color. Very frustrating to pick through. And I am working really hard on getting the back to look decent, too, because I guess I’m a little bit of a perfectionist. (I don’t cry too hard when I mess up a little on the back, though.)

I have two more questions:

  1. How do you handle it when you get an inadvertent knot in the floss? Do you keep running it through, or do you immediately stop and cut the thread off before where the knot happened? How do you handle it if it happens to lie on the back of the work?

  2. Um, I forget what question #2 was. My mind is like swiss cheese these days. If I remember, I’ll ask later. :slight_smile:

By the way, slackergirl, that is a gorgeous project, with the dragon. I am impressed! I do have a question, which is, how hard was it to learn to do Hardanger? I think I would be terrified of cutting the wrong thread. It does look gorgeous, though, from the pieces I’ve seen.

16

1.) Depends on the size of the knot. If it pulls tight and naturally falls on the back, I’ll leave it be. If it is in any way loopy, big, or would land on the front, I snip it, and undo a few stitches if I have to in order to secure it on the back.

2.) Hardanger isn’t that difficult. I have a pair of really fine point Gingher scissors that help immensely. I do all of the kloster blocks first and the cutwork dead last. I also only cut enough to uncover one or two crossweave sections at a time. It’s a lot easier to keep track of.

If anybody is wondering what the heck we are talking about, here are some samples, the two on the right are more traditional:

http://www.caron-net.com/patterns/marycol1.html

It is traditionally done in white cotton thread on white linen, but that is nearly impossible to photograph, so you see a lot of this kind of thing online.

Basic instructions:

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/8224/hardanger.html

17

When you’re working with a long piece of floss, it’s pretty common to get small knots with a couple of loops on top. If you straighten out the loops, run your needle through them and pull upwards, the knot comes right out. Saved me a lot of snipping, stopping, and starting once I figured that out! :slight_smile:

18

OK, I have another question for anyone who is still reading this thread. And that is: How the HELL do you manage to do fricka fracka #(#)#) French knots??

Last night I tried to do a French knot for probably an hour, and every single time, when I pulled the needle through to the back, all the thread came through with it. It didn’t knot up at all. I think I’m following all the instructions correctly – wind the thread around the needle three times, and insert the needle into the cloth close to but not exactly where it came through, then pull slowly. Supposedly a knot forms, but my thread just goes straight through. Am I doing this wrong? Is there some nuance of technique I am missing out on? Are you supposed to wind the thread in a particular place? Like, do you wind the part that is closest to the needle, or closest to the fabric?

Argh. Very frustrating.

19

The trick to French knots:

Wind the thread around the needle from the point to the eye. If you wind from the eye to point you won’t get a knot.

After you put the needle in the fabric, pull the thread tight against the fabric and needle.

20

Zyada, you’re a godsend! I’ve been fighting with French Knots for years, and right now I’m working on a wedding record for my sister’s wedding next week. The French Knots were killing me, and now, hopefully, it won’t look completely crappy! :slight_smile: