Should You Use Special Needles for Cross Stitch?

I’m going to confess something, which you can probably guess what it is by the headline of this post, but I have never spent much time thinking about the kind of needle I use when I do cross stitch.

Does it fit in the holes of the cross stitch fabric? Sold.

I may just be lucky that I happen to have a good supply of needles of all sorts of thicknesses, sharpness levels and lengths in my house from years of craft hoarding and inheriting other people’s crafty things. But that can cause its own problems because old needles can get dull (maybe even rusty?) or snag your work, and of course it’s always the best idea to have the best tools you can afford that are available to you.

So having said all that, I needed to read this post from Catkin and Lillie all about different needles for use in cross stitch. Just like other kinds of needles we come across in our crafting life, sewing needles come in different sizes that are appropriate for different kinds of stitching.

The key is the finer the fabric you’re using (that is, the higher count) the smaller needle you need so it will go through the holes easily. And bigger numbers mean smaller needles.

The post over there of course goes into a lot more detail about what size needle is appropriate for different kinds of fabric and other considerations when it comes to choosing what needle you should be stitching with. There’s even a video that will show you what happens if you use a needle of an inappropriate size for your fabric.

It also covers different types of needles beyond size, such as petite needles, gold-plated needles, sharps and ball-point tips and more. Some of these are options I didn’t even know existed!

It’s definitely worth a read if you want to make your stitching life a little easier by using the right tools. And who wouldn’t want that?

[Photo: Catkin and Lillie]

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Shamrock Cross Stitch Patterns

I have not done a lot of big cross stitch projects, but sometimes even with small projects it can be hard to decide exactly where to begin and how to work through the chart if you’re working with multiple colors. The general categories for the possible methods are known as cross country and parking.

Cross country means that you’re working one color at a time, moving around the chart (or the section of the chart you’re working on) until you’re done with that color. Parking means you’re working in a smaller section and doing all the colors in that area, “parking” the threads by leaving them attached to the canvas but out of the way while you finish each section.

Royal Rows is a specific way of parking named by Alison Royal, which is explored in detail on a post on Stitching Daily.

The idea is that you’re working one “tower” of stitches at a time (she uses a section of 10 stitches across by 20 down, but you can do whatever makes sense to you). You work all the stitches of a color at a time, starting at the top left and working your way down. When you’re done with a color you can park it where needed in the section below your current tower (known as the dungeon) or in the “east tower,” which is the section to the right.

There’s also a specific way of dealing with thread ends when you’re done with a color. This is a super simplified version (head to the blog post at Stitching Daily to get all the details) but the basic idea is that you’re working from left to right and top to bottom across the work, parking the threads in the next section when you’re done with them and systematically choosing which color to work with next.

The whole idea of parking is kind of overwhelming to me though I will admit that it makes a lot of sense. I guess I need to try it on a smallish big project and see how it goes. Do you use the parking method of cross stitch? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Stitching Daily]

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