Thoughts On Cross-Stitch...

God, what an old-fashioned art this is. While knitting has kept up with the times, with new-fangled needles and super-pricey yarns, cross-stitch has really gone out of style among younger women. This is a problem, because older women who wear bifocals claim it is too difficult to do. They’re right – the holes in the fabric are tiny, the holes in embroidery needles are tiny, and the fanciest stitches (like the French Knot) are so delicate that you need a magnifier to see them properly. This means that the art has to be passed to women still young enough to master it. No wonder cross-stitch is dying out.

When I was a kid, I did a cross-stitch that was specially designed for kids. It had a pre-stamped fabric, and larger holes, so I could just follow along as if I was doing a paint-by-numbers, with a larger needle that a child could handle. These kits aren’t sold in the craft stores anymore – there is no market for them. They may be available online – I haven’t researched it.

The thread is cheap. It frays frequently. It is hard to separate without knotting it up. And I’m still very much a beginner. I spend more time putting a knot in the base of a new thread, threading the tiny needle, and doing ten trial-by-error stabs through the fabric as I just try to pinpoint the correct tiny hole than I actually do sewing.

Still, there is something incredibly meditative about cross-stitch. It can be the yoga of needlecraft. It’s a great way to waste hours at a time, and you can throw away a week on a small 5x7 picture without even thinking about it. The tale of Ichabod Crane comes to mind. Cross-stitch is a rabbit hole straight into Sleepy Hollow if there ever was one.

The wonderful thing about cross-stitch, though, is that it can be personalized in a way that few other crafts can be, once you get the hang of the lettering. Some one I know has a simple one hanging by her front door that depicts a woman with a broom and reads, “You think this place looks bad now? You should have seen it BEFORE I cleaned it up!” Who wouldn’t want a unique, framed piece like that? Framed cross-stitch pieces from kits end up in yard sales all the time, particularly in the Midwest, but I have noticed that these highly personalized pieces almost never get tossed at a public sale.

A lot of old-fashioned things are coming back in this recession era, from DIY gardens to hand-cut pasta, but cross-stitch conflicts with a need for daily exercise. It is an invitation to sit for hours at a time and get fat, and we already have computers for that. So I’m not predicting a renaissance…I’m just a stubborn hold-out who wonders if I can train a little pair of hands before she gets old enough to dump me and the needlework for a treadmill and a future smart phone that texts when you think at it.

UPDATE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 2010
Cross-stitch was not as meditative as I hoped it would be. The end result is still beautiful, don't get me wrong. But I got so tired of the thread knotting up or fraying for no reason - the thread that comes with the kits is very cheap. The thread is constantly dropping out of the needle so that the needle needs to be re-threaded, which is a challenge when the needle has a tiny eye. And then, I swear, the needle seems to want to stab my finger without warning or reason.

After working on this project for a week, I switched back to knitting and was amazed at how much easier and less stressful it is to knit.