Welcome back to our Learning How to Cross Stitch series! So far we’ve learned what supplies you need, how to prepare your fabric, and how to do the English Cross Stitch Method. In this post, I will be teaching you how to do the Danish Cross Stitch Method. This cross stitch method creates a complete stitch individually instead of in rows at a time. It is a great method for doing a color that only requires a few stitches, or that involves a varying pattern in one color. Let’s get started!
Learn better through videos rather than pictures? Here’s the full length video tutorial of this post!
Danish Cross Stitch Method Picture Tutorial
Start the same way that you do with the English method, by inserting the needle up through the bottom left corner of the stitch. Pull the thread through, leaving a small tail of thread in the back.
Insert needle back through the fabric into the top right corner, and pull thread through.
Next, insert needle up through bottom right corner, and pull thread through.
Insert needle through top left corner, and pull through. You’ll now have one complete stitch.
Now you’ll repeat the same process you just did. Even though you’re doing stitches individually, you still want the stitch lines to move in the same direction. To do this on your second stitch, you’ll insert your needle up through the bottom left of the next square and insert it back into the top right corner.
Next, insert needle up through the top left corner, and insert back down into bottom right corner.
Pull thread through, and now you’ll have two complete stitches. Repeat this process till you have the desired number of stitches in that color.
Now that you know how to do the Danish method of cross stitch, you are ready to do complex color work. Some of my cross stitch recipes that are great for this method are the Let’s Get Kraken, Cinnabunny Roll, and Pizza My Heart.
The next post in our series will cover how to do a backstitch, which is how you sew straight lines onto the cross stitch design.
Happy Stitching!
~Claire
