Museum Notebook: Art of cross stitch goes back to Egyptians

Cross stitch purse, 1930s. This small purse features a colourful bouquet of flowers and background in cross stitch.

The last few years have seen an increase in practising mindfulness. We lead busy and technologically overwhelming lives and mindfulness is encouraged as a way to calm and focus the brain, reduce stress, and cultivate a peaceful environment.

Many people practise mindfulness by walking in nature, meditating, or even by embroidery.

Embroidery is the repeated action of pulling a threaded needle through the fabric to create a design. It encourages mindfulness by requiring embroiderers to be aware of their body, hands, needle, and thread, and to pay attention to a detailed pattern. The result is a peaceful moment that promotes inner calm and gratification by seeing the development of a piece of art that we’ve created ourselves.

Studies by the UK Royal United Hospitals have shown that the craft improves hand-eye coordination and dexterity, reduces stress and increases those feel-good chemicals, dopamine and serotonin, in the body.

Cross stitch is a form of embroidery where one stitch crosses the other, creating an X. The pattern is worked in rows of fabric and the picture is built up by the placement and colours of the crosses.

Cross stitch fan, between 1890 and 1920. The wire mesh of this hand-held fan has flowers and leaves cross stitched in wool thread.

Humans have been stitching coloured thread on to fabric for a long time, with some of the earliest embroidery samples dating to 200-500 AD. The earliest known sample to include cross stitch is dated to 500-600 AD and was found in an Egyptian tomb.

Cross stitch was initially one of several stitches employed in an embroidered work. Women, as the seamstresses of the community, would create a sampler of different stitching styles and use it as a reference for working on other pieces like embellishing clothing and homewares.

It wasn’t until the Middle Ages and the burgeoning Folk Art culture that it became the dominant stitch in any given piece. By the 19th century cross stitch was fading from fashion and the invention of the embroidery machine in 1828 saw even fewer people embroidering at home. The world war years of the 20th century saw a further decline in home embroidery because women were working away from home.

Cross stitch was revived in the 1960s and is flourishing today with a huge variety of patterns and materials available to stitchers.

The Whanganui Regional Museum holds a collection of embroidered works that include the cross stitch pieces pictured here. The collection ranges from samplers and display pieces to more practical fans and purses.

Cross stitch isn’t restricted to small or domestic items. The record for the largest cross stitch in the world goes to a replica of the painting The Battle of Grunewalk, originally painted by Jan Matejko in 1878. The complete cross stitch measures 9.2 metres wide and 4.05 metres in length. It has 7,897,840 stitches using 150 kilometres of thread in 200 different colours. It took 29 stitchers one year and three months to complete the piece. The pattern has since been published and takes 3270 pages to print.

If you need a little mindfulness, consider picking up a needle and thread and give cross stitching a go. It’s very calming until your strands get knotted.

■ Sandi Black is the archivist at the Whanganui Regional Museum.