When it comes to finishing your cross stitch, there aren’t many things that go through your head other than “I need to show this to everyone!”, however many people feel unsure or confused about framing. However, that really doesn’t need to be the case. We’ve got a detailed guide on how to frame cross stitch on the blog already, but there is one big question that keeps coming up; should I add glass or not?
 
Sadly, this is one of those questions that doesn’t have an absolute answer. Sometimes you should, and sometimes you shouldn’t.

When You Should

In most cases, when you frame cross stitch, you should use glass. There are loads of benefits, such as keeping it clean, stopping strong sunlight and making it look more professional. However all of those things can only be achieved if you frame your cross stith correctly. Let’s look at the parts of a frame to get a better look at this:

When you want to protect it

As you can see from above, there are loads of parts to a standard frame, and each of these has their own purpose. The big two we’ll look at though, are the glass (obviously) and the window mat. This window mat is often the thing people forget, however its purpose is to keep the work away from the glass. In most cases this isn’t too important, but when it comes to cross stitch, where the stitches extend beyond the aida, its super important. Without it, the stitches get squashed against the frame.

When its required for the pattern

Sometimes however, you might need to get rid of the matting. And that’s fine! Take my Star Trek Voyager LCARS cross stitch for example. I wanted to make it look like it was a computer screen on a wall, and as a result putting in matting would ruin the look. But I still used glass. How did I get away with that? I used spacers. There are loads of different types, but they all work the same way; small bits of plastic that push the glass away from the cross stitch.

You don’t like the look of framed work

But what if you don’t like the idea of framed work? Well, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t frame it. Take a look at the example below I found on Reddit. It’s a pacman screenshot cross stitch, fairly average (although well stitched) and when framing it, they added a bold yellow matting. The framing technique here has allowed the whole piece to stand out like a classic arcade cabinet. Now, bright yellow might not work for the cross stitch you’re doing, but by using clever framing, you can not only add to the cross stitch, but elevate it.

When You Should Not

Now, that said, there are times when you should ditch the glass. By doing this, you’ll loose the benefits of having glass, so you need to be more careful (see our tips at the bottom of the page) but sometimes glass just won’t work.

When you don’t like the glass

Yes, you can have a glass preference. 😛
When it comes to glass, some people don’t like the shine it creates, and if your artwork is somewhere glare is a problem, then you might know what I mean. So glass companies came up with solutions. Two specifically. The first is a slightly bumpy textured glass, which in my opinion makes the artwork harder to see. If you had a small count, this wouldn’t work. Equally, there is another type with a green coating on it (like eye glasses) which ruins the look if you’ve stitching with anything other than green.
The only solution? Ditch the glass.

When its required for the pattern

The other instance when you might not include glass is when its required for the pattern. Now, there really aren’t many patterns like this, so I’ve had to use another example of mine. In the below Pokemon 3D cave cross stitch you can see the cross stitch extends out of the frame, by nearly 30cm. There was no way I could frame this with glass, so I had to ditch it.

Tips for framing without glass

As seen above, sometimes there is a valid reason for not framing with glass, and honestly, that’s not a problem. However there are impacts of not framing with glass. With these tips, you should be able to keep those to a minimum!

• Make sure its washed and ironed before you frame it; it’ll last longer
• Keep it away from direct sunlight; the threads will keep their color longer
• Use a special acid-free backing paper for framing to stop dust leeching into the artwork

We have a lot of people using our skin tone thread image to replace skin tones in cross stitch patterns. However we also get a lot of requests for hair colors too. So without further ado, we present the best hair colors for replacement in cross stitch patterns.
Just pick your hair type (blonde, brown, black, grey or red) and pikc a color of the main body of hair from the left hand column, and you’ll see the best highlights and shadows.

With websites like Etsy, eBay and a whole host of other sites selling cross stitch patterns, you could be fooled into thinking all of these cross stitch patterns are going to great to stitch. But the frank, and sometimes disappointing truth is that some, even most, are bad patterns.
Whilst that might not seem too bad considering the cost of some of these cross stitch patterns are less than $5, however do you really want to spend 100 hours stitching to find only at the end that the pattern didn’t live up to the hype?
Well I’m here to help you pick the best quality cross stitch patterns, everytime. With these 5 simple rules, you can make sure the cross stitch pattern will come out like its supposed to.

Is there a stitched example?

The first thing to think about when selecting a cross stitch pattern is how it looks. Not the design, but how it looks stitched.
A lot of sellers, particularly on Etsy, sell patterns without ever stitching them. This is worrying for two reasons; firstly you don’t know how the image actually looks with threads; just computer generated Xs. Secondly, with no one actually stitching it, you don’t know if its full of confetti or not. As a result, I would NEVER buy a pattern without seeing a real stitched example.
But that doesn’t mean any post without a stitched example should be avoided. Let me explain using two examples of good patterns from Etsy.

Look for stitch and color counts

When it comes to cross stitch patterns, sometimes, you need it to be high detail. And that’s great, but when you put an image through a cross stitch pattern generator without knowing what you’re doing, it comes out massive, with a lot of colors, and whole load of confetti.
Once again, we’ll look at the Octopus Tea cross stitch pattern by LoLaLottaShop on Etsy. In the octopus you have a wave of colors and detail. But they’ve specifially gone through the image to both reduce the size, amount of colors and still keep the design to a high standard. However looking at the below example I’ve recreated another way; making it big, and adding as many colors as I could. In the below example is over 300 stitches wide, and has over 50 colors. Yet the quality, is clearly not as good.

Is it copyrighted?

Yes. Copyright; everyone’s least favorite topic. Sadly, in cross stitch copyright is a serious problem. A simple tip often used is to ask yourself “is it a recognisable character/image?” and normally, you can side step most major copyright holders. However, that doesn’t mean the pattern you’re about to buy isn’t copyrighted.
Imagine a pattern that envokes feelings of Disney; its fan art of some kind. Looks like a painting. It’s nicely done. This might not be copyrighted by Disney, as its fan art. But the maker of the cross stitch pattern is almost definately not the artwork’s original creator. That original creator, has copyright on his image. ALWAYS look to see any copyright messaging on cross stitch patterns before you buy. Using our Octopus Tea Cross Stitch Pattern again, we can see a little message in the notes:

“Octopus” counted cross stitch pattern. Designed by Vik Dollin.

We can see that this pattern has been made by someone else and the permission was given to make a cross stitch pattern. You should always be able to see a message like this, even if it is created by the pattern designer.

Is the price super low? Its probably stolen.

Another possible issue plaguing sites like Etsy are stolen patterns. Some people purchase a pattern from a reputable place, such as floss and mischief, who recently won awards for her cross stitch patterns two years running, and then they’ll sell them on at a really really low price.
As a result, you should look at price. Most cross stitch patterns (not kits) sell between $5 and $20, based on size and complexity. However a quick search of Etsy and I can see some patterns sold for as low as 20 cents. No designer worth their salt can produce quality patterns for anything less than $5 a time.
If you see any lower than that, they’re either stolen from someone or seriously poor quality.
When researching for this post we actually found my Pokemon Great Wave Cross Stitch sold, using my images. The issue is that I’ve never released this pattern. Instead they put my image, with watermark through pattern making software. The result was nothing like the original, and even included my watermark…

Is it from a reputable source?

This one is a little more difficult to judge. If you were to buy a pattern from, lets say peacock & fig you’d know its a quality pattern. The reason, is that she’s a real designer (who does it as a day job) and is bound by laws as she’s making her living from it. But places like Etsy and eBay are known to have issues with copyright. Therefore you need to be far more careful when selecting patterns from these sites. Equally, the rise of Aliexpress in cross stitch is a serious problem; a lot of these patterns are stolen, of bad quality or just knock off (don’t start us about the kits), therefore I wouldn’t suggest buying any patterns.

Don’t swap

OK, this one isn’t actually about finding quality cross stitch patterns, but it is important (its also our 6th point, sorry!). Cross stitch designers regularly make little to no profit and so when you find a pattern you like; don’t give it to a friend once you’re finished. Tell them about it, so they can buy a copy themselves. If everyone shared their patterns; the best designers wouldn’t be able to make more patterns.
 
And that’s it! With a few simple steps you can see if the pattern you want to buy, is going to be a good one or not. I hope this helps, and enjoy never having a bad pattern ever again!