When we start cross stitching, most of the time we are just focused on getting the needle into the correct hole in the fabric and keeping our tension even so that our stitching looks good. But over time you might want to refine your technique to make your stitches even neater.
One of the problems with cross stitching is that the thread tends to twist as we stitch, making stitches that don’t lie totally flat. The good news is lots of smart stitchers have figured out ways to counteract that twist and help make stitches that look better across a project.
You can read about three of these methods in depth over at HubPages, but I’ll cover them really quickly here.
The first I have talked about before and that’s railroading, which is where you split the two threads you are stitching with and take your stitch between them to keep them separate and therefore untwisted. (Read more about that here.) This is pretty easy to do and once you start doing it, will become a habit pretty quickly.
The post linked above also suggests that you can counter the twist in your thread by taking the needle through the fabric eye first instead of needle tip first when coming up from the back of the work. I’ve never tried this but it sounds like it would be pretty awkward.
Another thing that can help is just making sure that when you are stitching, the working thread is positioned above the area where you are making stitches. This doesn’t really help with the twisting, but it can help the stitches look more even and lie flatter on the fabric.
Have you tried any of these techniques? Do you have other tips for making your cross stitches neater? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
[Photo via HubPages]
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