How to Cross Stitch on Clothes with Waste Canvas

The problem waste canvas solves

Counted cross stitch needs a grid. Aida has one woven into it. A sweatshirt does not, and a jersey T-shirt has something worse than none, which is a stretchy one that changes shape while you work.

Waste canvas is a stiffened open-weave grid you lay on top of the garment. You stitch through both layers, using the canvas holes to keep the crosses square and even. Then the canvas comes away and the stitching is left sitting on the cloth as if you had somehow counted it there.

The arithmetic that catches people out

Here is the part that surprises almost everybody the first time.

On aida you stitch over one square. On waste canvas you stitch over two threads, because a single thread of the canvas is too fine to hold a stitch square. So the finished stitches come out at half the count printed on the packet.

If you buy 14 count waste canvas expecting 14 count results, your design comes out twice the size you planned, and you find out after you have basted it on.

It is the same over-two rule that makes 28 count linen behave like 14 count aida, explained alongside the rest of the sizing in what fabric count actually means and applied to every cloth on sale in what fabric to use.

Working out how big the design can be

Do this before anything else, because the answer usually means making the design smaller.

Measure the area you actually want covered. A chest pocket is around 4 by 3.2 inches. On 14 count canvas worked over two, that is 7 stitches to the inch, so:

4 in x 7 = 28 stitches across
3.2 in x 7 = 22 stitches down

Twenty-eight by twenty-two. That is a small motif, not a portrait. A worked example at a slightly larger size, 39 by 31 stitches with 12 colours, comes to about two hours of stitching and a dozen skeins, which is a weekend rather than a season.

This is the honest constraint of garment work and it is worth accepting early. The stitches are physically large, so a design that would be a face on aida becomes a shape on a shirt. Simple, bold motifs work. Photographs mostly do not, unless you go up to a jacket back.

What the garment is made of

The stabiliser question has one answer per material, and getting it wrong is the most common way a nice piece of stitching ends up puckered.

• Stretchy knit, like a T-shirt or a sweatshirt. Iron a fusible stabiliser to the inside behind the design area. Pre-wash the garment first, since a shrink after stitching pulls everything out of shape. Keep the tension relaxed while you work.
• Denim. No stabiliser needed. Mark the centre, and use a sharp needle rather than the blunt tapestry needle you would use on aida, because you are now piercing fabric instead of going between threads.
• Tote bag or canvas. No stabiliser. Watch the seams, and hoop only the flat panel rather than trying to hoop across a seam.

Putting it on and stitching

1. Cut the canvas at least an inch larger than the design on every side.
2. Line its threads up with the grain of the garment. Not by eye at a glance: actually look along the weave. Crooked canvas means crooked stitching, and there is no fixing it afterwards.
3. Baste all the way round, and across the middle both ways if the piece is large. Tacking thread, big stitches, a colour you will see.
4. Find the centre of the canvas and the centre of the design and match them, the same way you would on aida. The rules for reading a chart are unchanged here.
5. Stitch through both layers, keeping the tension relaxed. Do not pull tight: the canvas is coming out later and the stitches need to be able to settle onto the fabric when it does.
6. Try not to pierce the canvas threads themselves. A stitch that has speared a canvas thread will not let it out later.

Taking it off

This is the step that goes wrong.

Trim the canvas back to within about half an inch of the stitching. Dampen it thoroughly, a spray bottle is fine, and leave it a few minutes. The canvas is stiff with sizing and water is what softens it.

Then pull the threads out one at a time with tweezers. Take the shorter direction first. They should slide out with a small amount of resistance and no drama. If one fights you, add more water and wait, do not pull harder.

Soluble canvas is the alternative and it skips this stage entirely: warm water and it is gone. It costs more and it is a little floppier to work on. Over a large design, or on a fabric with a nap that grips, it earns its price.

Afterwards

Let it dry flat. Press from the back, over a folded towel, so the stitches sink into it rather than getting flattened, which is the same press a framed piece gets. Then wash the garment inside out and cool for the first few cycles.

The whole approach only really works when the design is sized to the garment from the start, rather than a chart made for a frame and then squeezed onto a pocket. That is the calculation Flossgrid does first: one real measurement off the garment, the over-two rule applied to whatever canvas you have, and then the squares, the skeins and the hours that actually fit there. If you are converting a photograph for it, keep it bold, and read what a small stitch count does to detail before you commit.