How to Do Basic Cross Stitches

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Vickie Pavone on behalf of Expert Village. In this series we'll be talking about the basics of cross stitching. In this segment I'm going to demonstrate how to do the basic cross stitch. The first thing after you've threaded your needle and prepared your fabric...I'm going to come from the back of the fabric in the first hole. Bring the needle up, turn it over and you're going to hold onto the back of that thread with your finger tightly so that you don't knot it, you don't want any knots on the back. Next, you're going to take the thrift needle and you're going to go down into the hole diagonally across from it. Then straight down from that hole, you're going to come into the next one, and then go diagonally. This makes your basic "x" which is why it is called cross stitch. This is your basic "x". I'll show you again. You come up in the first hole, you're going to go down diagonally, come straight down, the hole straight down from there, come up and go down diagonally to make your "x". Now in cross stitch, you have a full cross stitch like this, a half cross stitch and a quarter. To make the half cross stitch you come up in the hole, and you go down diagonally. That is the first half and that's all you do. That's your half cross stitch. Show you again. You're going to come up in the hole, and go down diagonally. Now for the quarter cross stitch start the same way. Come up the first hole, but you're going to go down about half way. It just makes a smaller stitch. Come up in the hole, go down about half way in your fabric and that's your quarter stitch. You can add the quarter and the half and make a three quarter stitch just by putting those two together. And those are the basic stitches for cross stitches."