A little talk about decorating your weaving. I haven’t done x-stitch since my Great Aunt Margaret made me sit down and stitch pillow cases for my Hope Chest when I stayed with her one summer. She was aghast that I didn’t have that relic of another age filled with hand-work. She was even more aghast by my lack of skill in that basic embroidery stitch. She’s probably “turning in her grave” now at my continued lack of proficiency but here is my offering and I’m sure there are many of you who have become pretty experts at X stitch since it’s become so popular these last few years. I hope you’ll be will to share here with other weavers, how to do a better job than I’m going to be showing you.

First you’ll need a block woven in the plain tabby weave. I see that it helps if you are using a more or less evenly spun yarn, too. My sample is some hand-woven Jacob white and while it isn’t too bad, it does have some thick and thin places.
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Then you’ll need some graph paper to work your design on if you are making your own. I sketched out a little duck since I have no other patterns to work from at this time. I use needlepoint yarn to work the design. The kind that come in a skein like embroidery thread and is 100% wool. It’s thinner than the wool I wove with, which seems to work better. You need to keep in mind which way you are going to work your design. I was working mine with the square setting horizontally. If you are going to work with it diagonally you’ll need to plan your design differently, as the x