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]

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35+ Sunflower Cross Stitch Patterns

A while back I made a little rainbow cross stitch pattern and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I turned it into a patch. My idea was that it could be used on a jacket or backpack, or you could add a pin to the back and wear it temporarily on a shirt or elsewhere.

But what if you want to make your design more permanent? Is it possible to turn a piece of cross stitch into an iron-on design?

It turns out yes, it is, and Sirious Stitches has done it so I didn’t have to try to figure it out on my own.

The way they did it was by using HeatnBond, an iron-on adhesive that attaches fabrics without sewing. There was still sewing involved to finish the edges of the cross stitch fabric and make it look like a purchased patch. The post shows how to do this by hand or with your sewing machine. (I just did blanket stitch edging on mine, which doesn’t look like a “real” patch but is also a lot faster.)

Once you have the patch prepared it’s a pretty easy matter of using the fusible adhesive to the back of the patch so you can then iron it onto whatever jacket, pair of jeans, bag or whatever else you might want to add it to.

I guess I’m a little paranoid about the washability of cross stitch projects, though you could hand wash anything with an iron-on cross stitch patch as you might need to with a purchased iron-on patch, anyway. But this does look really cool and is a great option if you know you want to permanently add a cross stitch patch to a garment of bag.

Get the full tutorial over at Sirious Stitches. Would you add an iron-on cross stitch patch to something? I’d love to hear what you would use this technique for!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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