We’ve spoken before at length on how to track your cross stitch, including the best cross stitch tracking apps and we’ve also rounded up some of the best-animated cross stitch, but a new social media trend is taking over, combining the two, into a cross stitch time-lapse project tracker.
What is a cross stitch time-lapse?
Simply put, a time-lapse is an animated image or video of how a cross stitch develops over time.
A stitcher might take a photo every page (if they’re tackling a massive project), or every day, color, or even every few minutes (which only really works with miniature cross stitch.
This not only gives you an awesome little video at the end of your piece, which people have taken to posting on social media and cross stitch forums, but gives you a unique record of your cross stitch project.
How to make your own time-lapse
The first thing to work out is if you want to do one of these or not. We would suggest starting when you start the project, so if you’re one of those crazy stitchers who is already tackling something like our epic Pokémon cross stitch patterns then this won’t be for you. But if you’re planning to start; this should be right up your street!
However we should mention that some of the best examples are actually smaller stitches, so don’t think that this is an ‘epic-only’ thing.
Then, you need to simply take some photos. Or I should say ‘take some photos’ as it isn’t all that simple.
To get the most out of your time-lapse, you’ll either want to make sure you take photos from the same spot and angle each time or edit the images together once you have them all to line them up (the much more annoying technique).
Lighting doesn’t matter all that much, but trying to be consistent with your images is the way forward.
If you want to do this on a regular basis, consider attaching a camera to your cross stitch lamp or something fixed that you can always use.
Finally, comes stitching (pun intended) the images together. This seems like a complicated part, but it’s super simple.
Online services such as Ezgif or Canva allow you to just drag your images over your browser (or upload them) and it will make a great little time-lapse of your cross stitch project.
Have you been inspired to create your own time-lapse? We’d love if you’d link it below and we can feature it on the site!
Happy stitching,
Lord Libidan
Having made stop motion videos in the past, one tip I’d share here is also consistent lighting. Don’t rely of ‘what comes through the window’ or the video will flicker madly.
The light from a crafting lamp turns out to be great for this kind of thing.
Great advice!