This post was originally in XStitch Magazine Issue 6: Mixtape, and has been adapted.
 
Cross stitch has always had a lot of similarities to music in my mind, not only does has it been with us for nearly as long in history, but its popularity ebbs and flows. There is even a ‘golden age’ of cross stitch in the 1800s when it was seen as a young lady’s proof of skill. But there is one other thing that music shares with cross stitch; much like the music of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, we’re in a revival, a revival that isn’t just marked with a renewed interest in cross stitch, but with definite influence coming from historical samplers, mixed in with modern style.
 
We now live in an era where retro is cool again, you can just look through past copies of the Xstitch Mag to see that swinging 60s are as popular now as ever, with images and icons from 30, 40, and 50 years ago being in vogue, refreshed and reborn in cross stitch. In music, 80s pop bands are starting to reform and tour again, which are not only on 80s revival radio but mixed in with the current offering of music, which has clearly been influenced by its older counterparts.

Cross stitch has modernized and adapted to offer an array of choices, a ‘mixtape’ of options and choices, all that is available to the professional or the hobbyist.

 
Until the mixtape. The advent of personal tape recorders and tape players introduced the capacity to record music of choice for replay at a time of choosing. The mixtape was born in the 80s and was more than just music on a tape. A leading essayist of the time described it as “perhaps the most widely practiced American art form”.
 
Ironically, the mixtape exists today as a retro throwback or a shuffle on an iPod. Although more famous mixtapes such as Now that’s What I Call Music have just celebrated the 100th release. But its permeated modern music tastes, modern technology, and a larger choice of music available.
 
But the mixtape isn’t the only revival, hobbies of by-gone decades are back in. Cross stitch has never been more popular than it is today. Back in the 1800s, it’s the ‘golden age’, it was only available for those in the know, the rich upper classes. Its 1900s ‘silver age’ had mostly male workers stitching, but it failed to be accepted by everyone.
 
Revitalized and appealing to the younger hobbyist, rather than the traditionalist granny in a rocking chair cross stitch is now in its mixtape era, not only due to it permeating every age group, class, and age but because cross stitch isn’t just a singular. This reignited interest may have come down as a primarily purist hobby, but modern times have brought with it; options. Options that allow you to make a cross stitch mixtape of your own choosing.

This post was originally in XStitch Magazine Issue 7: Love, and has been adapted.
 
When you look up love in the dictionary you can get a whole series of definitions, however, at its core, love is an intense feeling of pleasure in someone or something. However, if you look up the definition of similar words, appreciation, devotion, passion, and fondness, you come up with very similar definitions. Instead, love becomes a word to signify an absolute commitment to something.
 
Yet people, myself included, state they love this or love that. Maybe it means something different in different circumstances. Maybe it’s just a psychological stimulus or plain and simple unadulterated joy. Or maybe it’s deeper than that. When I say “I love cross stitch!”, does that mean I’m in love with cross stitch, or does it mean I have a passion for cross stitch, a commitment to it?
 
I would initially say yes. I elect to cross stitch over almost every other hobby, pastime, or event. I’m sure most of you do too. But does that mean I have a relationship with cross stitch? Do I have to start looking at stitching as a third wheel in the relationship? Or even worse; is it just a fling?
 
I would argue that anyone who states they love cross stitch is probably exactly that; in love with cross stitch. But love has come in many, many different forms. Love can be enduring, passionate, or sometimes even fleeting. So, when it comes to cross stitch, what type of love is it?

Infatuation

For many, love starts quickly. This is the crush stage, needing to know every single detail about some TV or music star. And whilst age tends to dull the enthusiasm in which infatuation takes form, that rush when you see someone winking from across the bar is the driver. It’s the thing that gives you the push to walk over and start talking to someone. Someone cross stitching that is. For many of us, we found stitching through another person, we asked questions, we wondered, we maybe put it at the back of our heads for months, even years. But that time when you walked through a haberdashery; saw a tiny inch square highland cow, and you took the plunge.

Understanding

You’ve done it! You brought your first kit. Yeh, it’s a random tiny and frankly overcute cow, but who cares? You pull open the packaging, you pull out the threads, you find your needles, threads, scissors, hoop and you get good light… and then you see the book that came with it. Yeh, the instructions.
 
Our glorious editor, states that you can learn cross stitch in 10 minutes, and frankly, I agree. But when you’re five the instructions, your mind races, you look with quizzical panic as you see different stitches! Quarter stitches? Backstitch? French knots!? But then you realize; they aren’t in the pattern, so that’s a lesson for another day.
 
You start your stitch and you learn your craft. You see how crossed thread makes something wonderful on mass. You learn the correct way of laying, the right length of thread, you learn about sizes of needles, and before you know it you have literal piles of kits surrounding you.

Disturbance

Or as I like to call it ‘beginners’ frustration’. Everyone’s first kit goes well, and even if it doesn’t you probably don’t know what you did wrong. But as you take more and more steps into the cross stitch world, you start making slip-ups, you realize halfway through a Wallace and Gromit pattern that their legs are 10 stitches too short, you get knots on the back of your work that are just impossible to untie, you stitch something in the wrong color, maybe counted wrong and found the wonderful world of frogging.
 
This is make or break. Some will give up, some just don’t have the heart, and I don’t mind saying that I thought about it too, but others will knuckle down, they’ll push through, they’ll frog the whole dang Gromit leg if they have to. If you push through, this is where you can truly call yourself a cross stitcher. Not because you stuck with it, not because you learned how to not make those mistakes, it’s because you learned to accept them. I still frog, I still get weird unsolvable knot puzzles, I still botch patterns. But I know it’s not the end of the world.

Obsession

Just one more stitch, just one more stitch. Let’s face it, almost everyone reading this article has been in a situation similar to this, when they’re up at 3 am stitching when they promised themselves an early night. It happens. I’m definitely not going to blame you. But this is a super important part of love. Everyone reading has likely got to at least this state. The point where they want to know it all, they want to learn about what others are doing, and how others are pushing the craft.

Experimentation

But watching others push the craft isn’t enough. For me, I want everyone reading this to take up their needle and keep on pushing cross stitch. I want people to look at my work and see something they can build on. I’m probably best known for my transforming robot cross stitches, but the story behind them was probably very similar to the one you’re taking right now. I saw a transformer pattern, it looked cool, it looked doable! But I wondered, couldn’t those arms move? And what about that head, if it just sent down a bit and that went there and boom, transforms to a semi-truck. I honestly started that project not knowing how it would end. I truly and honestly thought it would fail. But it didn’t. In fact, it went so well that other people have now started creating their own things in a similar style. That is what being part of a cross stitch community is all about; the pushing of boundaries and the passing of experience. I would argue that until you push yourself beyond what you know you can do, you haven’t yet got past this stage, but you brought this mag, so you’re thinking about it already.

Passion

And so comes passion. Those pattern failures or experiments that go wrong just slip off your back like water. You don’t mind the ups and the downs, you’re in it for the long run.

Devotion

The final step. The marriage to cross stitch. In my mind, I hit this a while ago. In fact, when asked what would happen if I couldn’t cross stitch ever again, I truly didn’t know what I would do. It is my everything.
 
And so I wonder, when did you start saying that you ‘love cross stitch’? Because whilst I truly believe you love cross stitch, sometimes it’s good to look back and see where we’ve come, what we’ve been through, where we are now, and how everyone in the Xstitch Magazine family was right there with you.

For as long as I’ve been cross stitching, there have been snarky cross stitches, NSFW cross stitches, postmodern cross stitches, tongue-in-cheek cross stitches, and even just the plain old retro cross stitches. These designs are great, but they serve a purpose; to subvert. But what exactly does that mean, and is it as contemporary as we’d like to think? I say no.
 

 
Its important that we start with a definition, or more specifically the definition of the word. Whilst you probably think you know what something is, its actual definition can be wildly different, take the humble cross stitch sampler for example.
So subversion is to undermine the power and authority of an established system or institution. This can take a whole or part of a cross stitch, but as many know it, a sampler of some type.

Modern Trends

In modern times, subversion can be highly varied. It can tackle major injustices, racial freedoms, or it can be a simple subversion of the common cross stitch. For most, this is the vast majority of cross stitch samplers, but even ones that aren’t made to be incongruous or shocking are still subversive.
 
In the below example someone has taken on the home sweet home cross stitch sampler trope, a highly traditional design, and subverted it by pushing a very modern video game aesthetic on top. This in itself does subvert, but the very nature of the work, a vault under the ground where the inhabitants are trapped for hundreds of years, pushes that envelope even further, mocking the original intentions.
 
Whilst this is far from the most subversive cross stitch, it does go to show that subversive cross stitch is very popular. This increase in popularity does mean its more obvious to the everyday cross stitcher, but in order to be a video game cross stitch, it needs to be contemporary.
 
But does it get older than this?

Second World War

With our second example, we throwback to the second world war, a time where you probably didn’t expect cross stitch to be popular, but with thousands of prisoners of war across Europe, cross stitch was a popular pass time. In reality, the British government supported this, indirectly, as they sent supplies that were tools for escape, however that didn’t stop POWs having their fill of cross stitch.
 
One such example is the fantastic work of Alexis Casdagli. At first glance this is a very Nazi loving sampler, a sampler so impressive to the nieve Nazis that they took this apparent pro-third Reich sampler around Germany to show off in other prisons. They were at the time, the authority, the established system, and Alexis subverted them in a way they didn’t even know. Around the edge reads simple morse code, familiar to all British troops at the time, with very subversive statements like “God Save The King” and even a swear word; “F**k Hitler”.
 
This is a sampler that not only subverts the authority of those in power but flys under their radar, hidden from view, meaning the Nazis spread the subversive statements to other prisoners of war.
 
But does it get older than this?

19th century

The last example we have today is a fantastic cross stitch sampler by a young Elizabeth Parker in 1830, and whilst being one of the most intimate works you might have seen, is also strong in subversion. This was a time when cross stitch samplers were expected of young women when they were intended to show off their skills for a future life of marriage and to strengthen their bond with God. This was a time when young women couldn’t write and mental health was far from understood. Elizabeth subverted this expectation.
 
The opening passage of this sampler reads “As I cannot write I put this down simply and freely as I might speak to a person to whose intimacy and tenderness I can fully entrust myself.” from the very opening passage she is showing a wildly different take on a sampler, something at the time so traditional and expected. She subverts the very position she is put in, not being able to write, yet still about to form words.
 
She goes on, in a lengthy passage, I would suggest anyone reads, stitching about her treatment that is “cruelty too horrible to mention”, her thoughts on suicide and her lack of resolve with God. This all coming from the mind of a 17-year-old girl. But this isn’t pure rambling, this is staged, planned, thought through. Her words are clearly well chosen, and the design clearly planned. Her placement of nothing but red letters on white linen makes the words so much more dramatic, a color that wasn’t well used in samplers of the time. She even ends the whole passage with “what will become of my soul” followed by a large blank space, urging the reader to ponder on what happened to her.
 
This sampler is a diary of such, but I would argue that its one of the most subversive pieces you’ve ever seen, and whilst it doesn’t have that meme-worthy snarky snippet of modern stitching it’s subversive all the same.
 
But does it get older than this?

Earlier

Sadly, we don’t have any examples of subversive stitches before the 19th century, but let me be clear; we barely have any cross stitches before this time. The 19th century was a big boom time for cross stitch history where cross stitch became mainstream, thanks to cheap wool and cotton imports. However that to me, leaves the query open, for whilst we don’t know what came before, we do know subversive cross stitch is far older than we imagine.