The White, Black and Red History of Cross Stitch

I will admit that I don’t know all that much about the history of cross stitch. I know it’s an offshoot of embroidery, which has been around for thousands of years, and that cross stitches were used in conjunction with all sorts of other embroidery stitches long before it became a technique used independently to cover fabric with a design.

The history of cross stitch intersects with other embroidery movements that can include cross stitch, too, like whitework, blackwork and redwork. Lord Libidan gives us the rundown of the history in a post on his site, adapted from an article written for XStitch magazine.

Whitework was worked with white thread on white linen, and sometimes involved cutting away the fabric and leaving the embroidery with no background. That kind of embroidery came to be only allowed for nobles and royalty in England, so a new style was needed for the masses.

Black stitch was a technique Catherine of Aragon brought from Spain to England, and while it wasn’t exclusively worked in cross stitches, it’s a step in the evolution to modern cross stitch that we know of today.

And as red thread became available from Turkey, redwork embroidery (and combinations of red and black in the same project) became really popular, and motifs were sold so that stitchers could create from standardized patterns.

From there, stitching began to be taught to children, and cross stitch, as we know it started to come into being.

It’s an interesting history and I’ve just scratched the surface here, so if you love history or just knowing where the crafts you enjoy came from, Lord Libidan’s post is definitely worth a read.

I also talk a little bit about blackwork and whitework in my post all about how to embroider over on Our Daily Craft if you want to learn a bit more!

[Photo: The Steady Thread]

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Blackwork Embroidery 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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