Tips to Prepare Your Cross Stitch Fabric

I am going to be really honest here and tell you that I’ve never really done anything to prepare my cross stitch fabric before I start stitching (unless it’s a big project and I need a grid, but I hardly ever even do that).

Notorious Needle has a great post all about ways you can prepare for cross stitching that will make it easier or give you a better result. If you’re working a small, quick project for yourself you might do less of this kind of preparation, but if you’re working on a large project that will be framed, given as a gift or that you want to become an heirloom, these steps will help ensure that you start your project in the best way.

A lot of this is about making sure that you have enough fabric for the framing option that you want to use or so your project will fit in the hoop you want to use to stitch your project, and taking care of your fabric to make the stitching easier.

The post covers a lot of the basics that you might have learned naturally if you’ve been cross stitching for a while, but if you’re new to cross stitching or haven’t done a big project before, these ideas are super helpful. It’s great to get in the habit of doing these things and thinking ahead about how you might want to finish your project before you start. Then these things will just be things you do all the time and your projects are sure to come out better.

Go check out the post and let me know if you do these things. Or if you have other tips for getting started on a cross stitch pattern to make it easier/more successful, let’s talk about it.

[Photo: Notorious Needle]

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How to Grid Cross Stitch Fabric

The Dover Pocketbook Collection book Cross Stitch Flowers is a collection of floral designs by Gerda Bengtosson, reflecting the handworks of the Danish embroidery tradition. Haandarbejdets Fremme, known elsewhere as Danish Design, was a movement begun in 1928 to preserve and promote embroidery in the country.

The book includes 26 charts and a section on materials and basic instructions. The patterns are shown in a color chart on one page and include a thread palette and section for notes on the opposite page. The general descriptions of colors are used, such as dull blue green or earth color, rather than giving a DMC number or the code from a different thread company. This does allow you more wiggle room to use what you have but you may not necessarily end up with the same look the designer was going for.

That doesn’t really matter, though, and there are no photos of the finished stitched designs, just the charts, so it’s easy to go your own way and choose whatever colors you like. (There’s also space in the palette or in the notes section where you could write down the colors you use in case you want to duplicate the design in the future.)

The charts are large and have dark lines every 10 stitches or rows doe ease in reading. They look hand colored, and they only use full stitches so they should be relatively easy to stitch even though some of them are big. It would have been nice for the patterns to say approximately how big the finished design would be on different sizes of fabric so you know what you’re getting into without having to do the math yourself.

The patterns show a variety of flowers, from common plants like daisies and dandelions to snow gentian, plantain and Iceland poppy, to name a few. Most designs have around 8-10 different colors.

I feel like a lot of stitchers would want to see stitched versions of projects before they start stitching, but if you’re OK with just looking at the chart to decide what you want to stitch, this is a nice collection of floral patterns to stitch and a bare-bones book that allows you to focus on the charts without a lot of frills.

About the book: 64 pages, paperback, 26 patterns. Published 2025 by Dover Publications. Suggested retail price $9.99.

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