Cross stitch has changed massively over the decades, and as new technologies come out, patterns in particular, change a great deal. But with recent inventions like AI, and the rise of pattern only stores like Etsy, cross stitch patterns are evolving more than ever. But what does the future hold?
We go through the history of cross stitch patterns and give our best guess on what the future holds.
Education & Death
Most of us know the history of cross stitch and whilst this is an English-speaking centric history, with embroidery coming from the Silk Road and other places, most patterns were handed down through families or word of mouth.
This changed though with cross stitch becoming an education tool.
Cross stitch patterns were increasingly used to educate young women, to mourn deaths, and as ‘proof’ of being a good wife. And with this, came cross stitch pattern books, or in most cases, pamphlets.
Hailing mostly from Germany (where cheap wool imports revolutionized the embroidery scene), these patterns contained mostly motifs that you, the stitcher, would combine into a pattern around words or phrases.
Books
As time moved on, these pamphlets became more substantial, turned into tomes and eventually, books. For the longest time, these books were the only way to get patterns. Themes finally extended beyond simple motifs, with complete works being contained, although usually small, in order to fit in a standard 6×8 inch book page.
Then the 60s, 70s, and 80s rolled in, with new inventions like waste canvas, plastic canvas, and the cross stitch hobby being picked up by both women and men.
Magazines & Collaborations
And with that, cross stitch patterns as we know it came to be.
This came in a few different ways. The first was magazines, which not only increased the popularity of the hobby, and opened up more design ideas; but also increased the size of patterns.
Whilst we think of this as large pieces alone, they were also the inventor of SALs, temperature graphs, and similarly themed works you could stitch together.
But they also opened the door for cross stitch collaborations. Now, your favorite brands and characters can be stitched with officially licensed patterns. These started in magazines and made their way to books and then kits.
These kits then once again increased the size of patterns as they were no longer bound by set page sizes; they could be huge.
Etsy, Pattern Software & The Home Designer
Whilst this magazine era lasted a few decades, a few things all came about at once in the early 2000s. Platforms like Etsy made selling homemade items a viable option, cross stitch pattern software became something everyone could own, and the hobby gained new traction with the economic turndown.
This has brought some fantastic things, but also some not-so-great things. Firstly, home designers with weird and wonderful ideas finally had a way to show the world what ideas they had, and platforms like Etsy allowed people to search for patterns they wanted. Gone were the days of fairies, wolves, or flowers.
But they also brought along with it a glut of copyright infringing patterns, where you could pick up that pattern of your favorite mascot, but its quality couldn’t be terrible, or the original artist got no money for the work.
This has got better in more recent years, and we do think Etsy is good for the cross stitch world, but it took a long time to get hold of, and even now you can still get a stinker of a pattern if you don’t know what to look for when shopping for patterns.
AI & Robots
So finally we come to the future (or present and future), with the rise of robots and AI.
We’ve covered before on the blog how robots that cross stitch aren’t exactly there yet, and for the main part, simply won’t impact how patterns are made or distributed. But their digital brother; AI, definitely is.
Whilst there are many rumors about stores like Etsy having AI-created cross stitch patterns, I’m yet to find any myself. Places like Temu do have them though; and in the majority. So far they’re all trash, but as shown in my piece for the Xstitch Magazine where I got AI to make the very first AI cross stitch pattern from start to finish; you can make an acceptable pattern using AI. It lacks all the finesse of a human-made pattern though. And this is where the future is going.
With AI learning from itself, a time will come when a pattern can be made at the drop of a hat, with the colors you have to hand, and in the style you want. But with this, comes a lack of new styles.
Designers right now are pushing the boundaries of cross stitch, making patterns you would never have thought of, where the materials themselves are being pushed to new heights. AI just can’t replicate that.
And so, whilst AI will definitely have a big part to play with cross stitch patterns; human made patterns will always reign supreme.
What do you think the future of cross stitch patterns might look like?
Happy stitching,
Lord Libidan
Printed pattern books date back to the sixteen century and there are many available from Internet Archive and Antique Pattern Library. The site Flowers of the Needle has seven sixteenth-century Italian pattern books for free download.