Everything You Need to Know about Cross Stitch Fabrics

I have been writing about cross stitch here for a long time, and I’m done cross stitch now and then throughout my life, but I’m by no means an expert. So it’s great for me to have this gig where I get to learn new to me things about the craft and share them with you so we can all be a little smarter about the basics and beyond.

One big thing in cross stitch that I never learned much about is the fabric. I’ve pretty much used 14 count Aida for everything, and it works well for lots of different projects, but of course there are other options.

The Crewel Ghoul has a great post on their website all about what you need to know about different kinds of cross stitch fabrics. It talks about the major differences among kinds of fabric: weave, fiber and thread count. It looks at the differences between Aida, evenweave and linen, how to count threads and why you might want to choose different kinds of fabric for your project.

I’m sure I’ll still stick to Aida for most projects because it’s easy to work with, widely available, comes in a lot of different colors and is generally not too expensive. But it’s nice to know about the other options that are out there, and I’d love to feel skilled enough to work with linen some day because I love the classic look.

You can read all about the different kinds of cross stitch fabric, their qualities and where to buy them at the Crewel Ghoul website.

What about you? Do you use Aida all the time like I do, or do you change it up for different projects? If you have a favorite place to buy cross stitch fabric, I’d love to hear about that, too!

[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]

Next Pattern:

35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

If you love patterns for frogs and sardines, animals, food, flowers and more, Happy Cross Stitchers has got you covered. With more than 1,600 patterns as of this writing, you’re almost guaranteed to find something you like.

I don’t know if I’ve missed something that cross stitch patterns featuring sardines are showing up everywhere (this is the second designer I’ve seen with them in the past month or so) but Happy Cross Stitchers has 60 sardine cross stitch patterns. They also have 200 patterns with flowers, and even more than that in their biggest category, which is animals.

Many of the animal cross stitch patterns have a modern nursery feel to them, like this set of four modern boho animal patterns featuring what I’m interpreting as owls, a moose (or it coulr be a deer), a donkey and a cow. Each individual pattern is 100 by 100 stitches and they use six or seven colors. The designs will come out to 7.1 inches or 18.14 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric.

There’s also a large number of Christmas cross stitch patterns, with lots of trees, little houses, Santas and word art. There are lots of bunnies, eggs and chicks in the Easter section.

The modern designs include lots of colorful, graphic florals. There are also well over 100 butterflies, many of which at least look like they could be inspired by real butterflies (though none of them are labeled as to what kind of butterfly they are).

You’ll also find plenty of cute and often funny cat and dog cross stitch patterns, though there are a lot more cats than dogs represented. And then there’s the food section, with patterns for fruits, different kinds of toast, a jar of pickles, doughnuts and more.

And that’s not even all there is in this store! I guess all this is a long way of saying there’s a lot of fun patterns at www.etsy.com/shop/HappyCrossStitchers on Etsy and you should go browse because you’ll probably find something you like. And if you do, I’d like to hear about it!

[Photo: Happy Cross Stitchers]

Next Pattern:

Have you read?