Basic Lettering

I’m so excited to show you basic lettering in cross-stitch! It’s quick to stitch and makes it easy to personalize your pieces.

These basic letters are normally stitched with 2 strands, but depending on the look you’re going for (subtle or bold), you could easily use one or three instead. For this example, let’s stitch this small phrase.

Notice how not-quite-perfectly centered I stitched this? This is why our aida is bigger than our hoops, for minor adjustments to centre our design in the case you don’t start exactly in the middle.

Start by tying a knot in the end of your thread, as you would when stitching regularly (check out this post if you need a stitching refresher). Thread your needle up from the back. Our letters are going to be:

• two stitches tall,

• one or two stitches wide, and

• one stitch between letters.

The order you thread your letters doesn’t really matter, but I’ll show you a few tricks to have them looking their best. Our first letter is H.

Letters like H, T, E, F and more, have a line one-stitch long intersecting with a line two-stitches long. For letters like this, make sure you don’t split the thread when you thread your needle through the hole beneath the longer line:

To stitch this smoothly, you can either stitch the smaller line first, or thread into the hole covered by the longer line from the top. Be sure to move the existing threads to the side so the smaller line is neatly covered:

And then we continue on with the rest of the letter! Here you can see how the letter is one stitch wide and two stitches tall.

Just like with the H, the middle line of the E will need to be threaded underneath the longer line. The back may be a bit ‘zig-zaggy’ but this is normal. Just have fun with it :)

Continuing on, I’ve threaded the two ‘L’s in HELLO differently, so you can see the slight differences in stitching the same letter two different ways.

And after an O we have HELLO !

This is the basics of lettering, and you can keep it as simple or be as creative as you like.

Although easier to work with when it’s not tangled, the back can really look like anything as long as you’re happy with the front ;)

…and then I kind of did the same thing here…

You’d think after a lot of cross-stitch, I’d easily be able to centre my letters, but like my dad always says, if thinking was easy, everybody’d be doing it…

So while my words aren’t centered on the aida, or to each other, you get the idea! Here I’m stitching a T, making sure not to split the threads of the longer line.

I started in the middle, instead of at the beginning, of the word to prevent wasting thread on the back.

…and then I got really focused and forgot to take pictures while stitching the next 4 letters! Here’s a closeup:

And here’s the back!

Tie off your thread as normal and voila! You’re set.