How to Cross StitchHow to Personalize Your Cross Stitching Pattern

Hi. I'm Vickie Pavone on behalf of Expert
Village. In this series we'll be talking about the basics of cross stitching. In this segment
we're going to be talking about embellishing and personalizing your cross stitch.

To embellish
a cross stitch you want to use your little charms. In this case, I have a little bell,
star, there's beads, and all you're going to do is sew them on. To sew them on you're
going to come up through the back with the thread and you're going to go right through
it, and just go back down. You want to use a cross stitch, you do not want to use a straight
stitch because it'll be stronger with the "x".

You're going to go back down, and then
you're going to come back up the other way to make your "x", go back through it again,
go back down
and the thread won't show, it'll be behind the embellishment. The other kind of thread
will show but it doesn't matter. You're going to go up, come up through the center, put
your little embellishment through there,
and we're just going to make one little stitch in this one and it doesn't show that much.
You're going to go back down about half way, and that sews that on. The last thing is personalizing.
You want to put your initials and when you finish the picture.

The easiest way is to
come up behind and make straight stitches in your initials. My initials being "V" "L"
"P", I'm going to be using just the straight back stitch that we discussed before, make
a "V" an "L" and a "P". These can be anywhere on your picture but you want to keep it on
the outside of the picture that you did because you're just personalizing it for the people
you're giving it to, to remind them who made it for them. You want to keep it tiny so it
doesn't take away from the picture you just made.

And there you have it! "V", "L", "P"
and embellishments..