A Brief History of Embroidery

Embroidery stretches back many centuries, history mentions it as far back as Abraham and there are descriptions of Egyptian costumes decorated with embroidery. The art was very popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England and France and brought to America with our early settlers. American pioneer women spent countless hours embroidering, quilt making and sewing. Small girls usually began embroidering "samplers". A sampler is a piece of embroidery work consisting of an alphabet, a set of numbers and usually small designs of animals, plants or people. It sometimes had a border around it. Stitching a sampler helped a young girl learn her alphabet and numbers as well as the art of stitching. Cross stitch is one form of embroidery in which the stitches used to form the major part of the design is the "cross stitch". A multitude of small X's form the pattern. There are two forms of cross stitch, one is "Stamped Cross Stitch" and the other is "Counted Cross Stitch". In stamped cross stitch, the design is printed onto the fabric, most often with silk screening or heat transfer. The stitcher just needs to follow the stitches stamped onto the fabric with the appropriate colors. Counted cross stitch is different in that the fabric used is blank. A chart of the design is used as a pattern to transfer the design to the fabric. This transfer involves counting for correct placement of colors and stitches, thus it's name. My preference is counted cross stitch because I like to start with a blank field and watch my design grow. In addition, I like the more professional look of counted cross stitch vs. stamped cross stitch in the completed work.

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