A History of Cross-Stitch
Cross-stich embroidery is enjoying a bit of a renaissance these days, with Flosstube getting serious view and cross-stitch equipment sales increasing by 11% in hobby stores.
But this is just a blip in its history: it is one of the oldest known types of embroidery and can be found in various forms across centuries of practice.
What Is It?
It feels a little self-explanatory, but the technical definition of cross-stitch is a type of counted-thread embroidery where you form patterns out the little eponymous crosses (x’s.) Counted-thread is also somewhat self-explanatory: you count the threads on the foundational cloth that you cross with each stitch.
Earliest Signs
There are multiple types of cross-stitch, and some of these date back to 500 AD. In fact, a recognizable cross-stitch type of tapestry was found in an Egyptian tomb that dates back to then. Russia and China record shipping a lot of cross-stitched embroideries overland. Something like it was widespread in China in the Tang Dynasty (618 to 906 AD.).
But the earliest recognizable cross-stitch that the V & A museum names is from 850 AD. The Bayeux Tapestry uses the basic idea in some places, even. This isn’t the counted-thread variety we know today, however.
(Blackwork keeps being mentioned as an influence for cross-stitch, but I have done blackwork. I’m not seeing the similarity- also, if the earliest little x’s are showing up in the Bayeux Tapestry, Blackwork is a little late as an inspiration.)
This developed into the deliberate grid of crosses on loose-weave cloth in Islamic countries around 1100 AD, and that is what quickly caught on throughout Europe and Asia.
Cross-Stitch Samplers
A woman named Jane Bostoke made a sampler in 1598 to celebrate the birth of her niece two years earlier. She wasn’t the first to create an exhibit of all the stitches she knew, and she most certainly wasn’t the last. In fact, the sampler became a whole genre of needlework art.
Cross-stitch books flowed off the newfangled printing presses starting in the 1500's, and samplers were created by girls by the ton. Girls of all classes were taught basic stitches to create moral lessons and alphabets on cloth, and their lessons became samplers. These were collections of stitch types that a girl just learned, and cross-stitch type embroidery came to dominate these samplers.
These practiced stitches became the foundation for decoration on furniture and bedclothes, frequently being used by the creators to sign their work.
Continuity
If you look on the V&A exhibits or similar collections, you see a real explosion of cross-stitch in the 1600's- I even bought a collection of cross-stitch patterns from Germany that was published in 1660. It was on Etsy for $4.
The patterns have changed. The German book has intricate flowers that are densely packed and sinuous in design. The patterns you find on the samplers from the 1800’s tend to be more angular, and there isn’t nearly as much stuff in the design. Today’s pattern are cleaner and tend toward animal figures or feminist messages.
But we tend to associate it most with the 1800’s, and it certainly was popular then. It tends to join the quilting-bee and other feminine crafts that we associate with era. This is helped along by the Arts & Crafts movement of the mid-1900's, which did like to promote things like cross-stitch. Also, hobby crafts in general lost some of their appeal in the mid-20th century, making it seem more niche and Victorian.
However, it never really faded from use. It just waxed and waned in popularity, and you can now order patterns from Etsy as easily as any other craft pattern.
So, if you feel the need to embroider as your ancestors did, you can’t go wrong with cross-stitch.
Sources:
Threads of History by Jo Verso | Cross Stitch Basics — Stitchers’ Study — The Cross Stitch Guild
A Definative History of Cross Stitch | Lord Libidan
Loara Standish Sampler (archive.org)
Embroidery styles: an illustrated guide · V&A (vam.ac.uk)
Embroidery — a history of needlework samplers · V&A (vam.ac.uk)
Having_her_hand_in_it_Elite_women_as_mak.pdf