This post was originally in XStitch Magazine Issue 25: Black, and has been adapted.

As the riddle goes; a newspaper.
As the joke goes; a sunburnt penguin.
As the embroiderer says; cross stitch.

The history of cross stitch is fairly well known at this point. Pieced together from enduring stories, and surviving samplers, most people who take up the hobby know at least some parts. Normally, the most important parts. But one of these important parts; that Catherine of Aragon brought cross stitch to England, and subsequently the world, isn’t all that true…

White

Catherine of Aragon, whilst massively important to the story of English embroidery, didn’t actually ‘bring cross stitch to England’ for a few reasons.
The first is quite simply that cross stitch was referenced throughout embroideries from the 12th century and beyond in England. No one purely stitched in cross stitch (“counted cross stitch” as its now called) but England had been using the stitch hundreds of years before Catherine came to England.
The second and most important part of this story, is that she didn’t bring over counted cross stitch, and didn’t create an interest in cross stitch either.

England had for a long time been ripe with embroidery, forming many of the mediums, terms and styles we use today. Traditionally worked in white thread on white linen, a form known as whitework was so popular in England that a law was passed allowing it to only be worn by noble classes and royalty.

Black

What the Spanish born Queen did bring over, was counted black stitch. This interest in new embroidery meant a subsequent fervor around embroidery in Britain, with many schools and guilds forming as a result.
These skilled tradesmen are the real heroes of the story. By combining counted black stitch, with traditional English tapestries, and traditional Eastern European embroidery, created a form of embroidery made of pure cross stitch.

These cross stitch elements, usually created as embellishments on interior fabrics such as curtains and bedding, were sadly nothing other than a novelty though. Unlike the whitework of previous decades, cross stitch was relegated to a lesser hobby, not to be seen in nobles.

When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558 she combined the existing embroidery guilds into a royal school, and embarked on a push for domestic home building. In turn, driving canvas work for textiles of the era.

It was in this push, that all the right elements started to come together. A drive for embroidery for the common man, a slew of interest and in turn pattern books, a simplistic embroidery style that could be copied easily, and cheap wool from Germany.

This new form of embroidery, no longer only for nobility, started to spread across the country, and a little over 40 years later, we find the oldest existing counted cross stitch sampler.

Red

Whilst counted cross stitch as we know it was now became more popular, like many things, fads came and went. Whitework and blackwork both fell into obscurity, as more traditional embroidery styles took over both in Europe and beyond.

But the cross stitch we know today owes itself to another form of embroidery; redwork.
This is where our story moves over to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a tumultuous period marked by the end of the American Revolution and the start of the federal republic, the economy wasn’t in a strong position.

But tough times, bring innovation.
With a newly available red colorfast dye thread, the first commercially sold, coming from Turkey, enterprising housewives took needle to thread and stitched panels full of motifs. These motifs would often sell for a penny each, making them a very popular adornment in homes.

Using motifs inspired from Japan, animals and toys, redwork started to be taught to children, and became not only a money making endeavor, but also a hobby in its own right. This hobby started to formalize itself, with sizes and uniformity slowly forming.

Cross Stitch

This is where cross stitch really comes into itself. With the popularity of embroidery across the world, driven by whitework, the creation of counted cross stitch and creation of pattern books hot off the heels of blackwork, and the wide adoption of uniform samplers from redwork, cross stitch just needed one extra element to really hit it big time.

Sadly, it was the American Civil War. As a result of this war a large population of housewives and children were without a man in the house, and the enslaved from many states were freed.
But with the man of the home being the traditional reader and writer, women, children and the previously enslaved needed a way to learn how to do this instead.

Cross stitch, thanks to enterprising Germans, came to heed the call. Pattern books were filled with example text, alphabets that could be stitched up into samplers as we know them today.
These books were adopted by the masses thanks to the similarity to the motifs used in redwork, and stitched up to create samplers that taught reading and writing.

And with that, the modern cross stitch sampler was born. The history of cross stitch, is therefore white, black and red all over. And without the intertwined stories of whitework, blackwork and redwork we wouldn’t have the cross stitch we know today. But for most, this history is glossed over and forgotten to time…

Cross stitch went through many ups and downs in the decades afterwards, but struggled to get out of the sampler style. It wasn’t until the 80s, that this was finally shaken off.

Happy stitching!
Lord Libidan