How to Grid Cross Stitch Fabric

April 22, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

I’ve started (just barely, as you can see) a relatively big/complicated cross stitch project (the Baba Yaga house from Happy Little Mouse I told you about a while ago) and I knew that for this project I was going to need a little help keeping track of where I was and what I needed to do next.

Adding grids to your cross stitch fabric is a quick and easy way to help yourself when you’re working on a big project. Your chart will have grids marking off every 10 stitches and every 10 rows, so having those same markings on your fabric can only make it easier for you to follow along.

There are a few main ways to do this, which include marking the grid with thread (either embroidery floss, sewing thread, thread marketed for this purpose, or even fishing line!) or using fabric marking tools to draw the grid. Using a ruler when you do this helps a lot. Mine are still not that straight.

You can also buy cross stitch fabric that’s already marked, which of course makes it a lot easier, but it’s kind of expensive.

When marking your fabric it helps to know where the center of your fabric is, as well as where the center of the chart is relative to the grid marks so you can line them up.

This makes it a lot easier to orient yourself in the chart, and if you have a lot of one color all together it can make it easier to count stitches. Say you had 23 stitches in a row of the same color; stitching across two squares plus three stitches is a lot easier to keep track of than having to manually count them as you go.

Want to learn more about gridding cross stitch fabric and why you would want to? Check out my post all about ways to grid cross stitch fabric over at Our Daily Craft.

[Photo: Our Daily Craft]

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Finish Your Cross Stitch with Washing and Pressing

I’ll admit to not taking as much care as I should when finishing cross stitch projects. Just like blocking in knitting or crochet, taking the time to finish a cross stitch project right means it will look its best, whether you’re making it as a gift or to keep.

And when it comes to cross stitch, the best method for finishing is washing and pressing.

Kat and Catkin and Lillie makes the argument that you should always press your finished pieces, and wash them the vast majority of the time as well.

Washing of course will help if there is any visible dirt that got on the project while stitching, but it also helps remove oils and skin cells you can’t see but that can speed up damage to your project in the long run.

Washing and pressing also help remove creases from the hoop or from storing the project, and if you use heat-erasable marking pens to grid your fabric, this will remove any visible marks.

So we’ve got the why down, but what about the how?

Kat has a great step by step tutorial on how to wash your cross stitch projects and how to iron them safely. You probably have everything you need to do this, it just takes a bit of time to go through the process. It’s certainly worth it, though, if you’ve spent a lot of time on a project and are gifting it or framing it and want to show it off to its best.

Click over to the post at Catkin and Lillie for all the details, plus some really good thoughts on times when you might not want to wash a project and how to test the colorfastness of your threads so you’ll know if a project is safe to wash.

Do you wash and press your finished cross stitch projects? I’d love to hear all about your process!

[Photo: Catkin and Lillie]

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