How To Do Large Cross-Stitching Projects 

you are amazing..i love your videos...😍😍

I remember I was at the airport, this lady had a huge cross stitch she was doing, it was a good 5 ft tall probably 3 ft across. She said she'd been working on it for 20 years. She was almost done. It was beautiful. It was a medieval unicorn tapestry with a beautiful ornate border. She said she wanted to have it done to give to her son before she passed away.

I store all my floss in numerical order in several of the plastic cases like yours. When I’m starting a new project, I use another plastic storage case that not only holds the floss bobbins, but has a long slot to hold my scissors. I go thru the other cases and pull out the colors I need. This way I can carry my scissors, needles and floss and whatever else I need in what I call my project case. When I’ve completed my project, I return the bobbins to the other cases and prepare to pull out the colors needed for the next project!

For my third-ever cross-stitching project I've decided to do a huge poster-size full-coverage pattern. Not sure if this is confidence or just hubris. Either way, this video was super helpful, and I'm very glad I watched it before buying my supplies! Thanks for the encouragement and great advice!!

I have a tip that changed my life: I get a rectangular piece of styrofoam....I wrap it in plastic wrap...I use a sharpie to draw circles and label each color number and symbol on the wrapped styrofoam...I thread every color on the pattern, and stick the treaded needle in the circle on the styrofoam accordingly. When you change colors, you simply pull a threaded needle from your styrofoam pin cushion. I make several threaded needles for large color areas, like sky. I only do full cross stitch patterns. I also use a pencil to shade each 10 x 10 section as I go. My aunt actually cuts it out an tosses it. That’s extreme!

I started cross stitching this past Christmas. I'm working on a Dimensions pattern, that's 14x11. I am gathering supplies to make my favorite album cover, which will be full coverage. I cant wait to start it.

I LOVE HAED!!! I have done several - I just wanted to share another way to set up the floss for a big project - or any project. I have a large lazy Susan I use and the little ziplock floss bags on a metal ring - I put them in numerical order and place on top of the lazy Susan - it’s so easy to find the threads I need when I’m switching them so much. If I knew how to post a pic I would show you!! Thank you so very much for this video!! God bless and happy stitching!!

Your large London piece is gorgeous!

I must be crazy too. On any type of project I always go big or go home. Haha

Glad i finally found your channel

About to start a 30in. By 30in. Tapestry soon and wow. I need to grid, I’m so bad at counting and paying attention bc of my adhd and i think it will help me MASSIVELY! Thank you, this is a great video full of valuable information!

Absolutely love your personality. Thank you for helping me understand better, and yes, I'm crazy too! I'm old now, hahaha, and need to see better and this will really help. Stay safe.

I was doing this in school and got so addicted I would not stop until the bell rang

I love Full Coverage!!!

This video is so inspiring! I rotate between crafts and I have just circled back to cross stitch. Thank you for the wonderful tips 💖

Thanks, Jules. I love this video. I am preparing to start my first “full coverage” project and needed your enthusiasm and hints to confidently move forward. It will be a Christmas present for my son and his fiancé that is a copy of a photo of their beloved puppy. One thing I wanted to mention is that I organized my floss into the little plastic bags with the name, number and symbol on them and then hooked them together with two large rings through the holes in the bags.

I am hopeless at organizing my supplies. I seem to want to dive straight in and other than putting charts, pictures, instructions etc.in plastic envelopes everything else I don't sort out till I need it. Having said that I am a very good cross stitcher with many completed pieces. I am very neat on the front and on the back of my work. The reason I am saying this is that I love my stitching and want others who might be daunted by the complexity of the "advice", which often stems on the organizing of everything, may need some cheering from me. Just do it, have a go and learn as you go along, it's half the fun. Happy stitching.

I love this tutorial and will be checking out more of yours very soon. I too love large projects, with as much detail as possible, and I am so blessed to have a floor frame that my husband made for me years and years ago to use with scroll rods, which are absolutely awesome. I, too, have had repetitive strain injuries to my hands, wrists, elbows and neck, none of which were operable, so I have had to find a way to live with them and still enjoy my favourite hobby - needlework. Scroll rods on a floor frame are amazing, because I don't have to hold the fabric and/or hoop, and it saves me from aggravating my injuries. I will be 70 in 2 months time, and just can't live without my embroidery, especially since my husband passed away 12 months ago from lung cancer. I actually gave up embroidery for many years because of my husbands ill health, but after he passed, of course I still had all my supplies (and I'm a hoarder of the worst kind), and when I started to look at what was available online in the way of patterns, etc, I was flabbergasted. I am working on a Z'AnnaCrossStitch design which I found on Etsy, and have several more of her designs, which are HUGE. I have a Noah's Ark design that I want to do for myself which is 900 x 700 stitches using 240 colours, and I'm going to work it 1 strand of floss over 1 thread of 32 count fabric, and it will be close to 3 ft wide when it is finished. Looking forward to see some of your other work, and thank you so much for sharing your ideas, most of which are exactly the same as mine. HUGS!!!!

I am glad that the point of choosing the pattern was discussed. I find it very hard to do embroidery on request and now stopped taking requests. I am about to embark on a major project which will take a couple of years to complete and can only do it because the image is that of my beloved doggie.. I came across this video because I am researching info in prep of it and I am very grateful to the author of it :)

My son married a lovely Chinese woman while working in China. As one of their wedding gifts, I wanted to celebrate her heritage. I found an exquisite xstitch pattern of the Great Wall of China. It was more of a xstitch mural at 6’ wide and 24” tall. I knew that was too massive, there wasn’t a wall wide enough to accommodate it! I solved the issue by choosing a quarter of a panel. The panel was ~18” across and 2’ tall. I kept a diary while I worked. It took a little over 9 months of 4-5 hours a day to complete. I needed to have it finished by the time her spousal visa was approved. It became a daily routine. I purchased longer wooden dowels to fit on my wooden floor mounted frame. I had a floor light/magnifier to help me with the stitches. Then I just began. The color instructions were a must. My panel had 16 full pages. I started at the center right top, then left top, then right bottom, then left bottom…. And just kept going one stitch, one section, one page at a time. I began the fall of 2019 (COVID in China) and completed it in the late spring of 2020 (COVID in USA). COVID, embassies closings and the incredibly inefficient (legal) immigration system delayed their arrival till summer of 2021. The Wall was professionally framed and they both loved it! Hope you enjoyed my own LARGE xstitch project story!! Dianne NY

This video is amazing. The naturalness with which you spoke made me feel like you're talking to me in real life. Your information was so so so good you really helped me understand so so much. This was very engaging. Thank you very very much for sharing this, it really helped💕

That was the best video I've watched out FC cross stitch, many that I've watched have almost in a round-about way said that if you're not using a high count evenweave you're not really a cross stitcher. It's a little bit like knitters who say you're not really a knitter unless you knit continental style. So heart-warming to hear you use a lot of 14 count Aida. I probably wouldn't do a FC but maybe just a bigger size cross stitch than I normally would have done, at 68 my eyesight isn't that great either. Also that you use a smaller hoop and move it around! I'm in Australia floss here is $1.10 a skein at the moment and that's good, everything here costs more but then our wages are higher.

Hi there Jules, I started a large project this Christmas for the first time. Followed all your logic and organisation tips, but on top of all of them, I have a notebook in my project bag. I have a notebook because I bought myself a Stopwatch! Every time I sit down for a sewing session, I click it on and at the end I click it to stop! Every time it crosses the 24 hours point, it restarts itself and I enter the date and the 24 hours on my book. It is amazing at the end to add up and see how many hours you have spent sewing your piece. At a £ or a $ an hour for our labour, nobody could afford us! We have very valuable pieces of work. Lorna x x x x

I just recently got back into cross stitching from years of not doing it! I’m kicking myself... Past years I have started two large beautiful cross stitch projects and each time I ended up donating to good will! Now I wish I kept them... I thought I would never finish them since it took me years to just get them half done! Now I want to get another to prove to myself I can do it! 😄😂🤪

At 71, I agree w your preference of 14- count aida. I also xerox my Haed 150% on 11” x 27” paper at FedEx and the symbols chart. Seeing a whole enlarged page at a glance is much easier to find the symbols. Plus I’m not starring at a computer screen which cannot give me a whole enlarged page. Much easier on the eyes, don’t have to turn computer on and off, save electricity, and can’t accidentally erase my finished portion

Man...THANK YOU! . cross stitched for years but never wanted to tackle the REALLY big projects I had in my stash. The worry amd anxiety I.would get took all the fun away. So thank you so much for all of this knowledge amd for.sharing it with us. You really are helping people, seriously, you really helped me get over that crap and back into doing something that IS FUN AGAIN...NOT WORRYSOME. This and your other video, how to set up and start a cross stitch project, have absolutely been invaluable tools and helped me get back at it again...FINALLY!!!! Its been too long. Way way WAY too long!! So..I just wanted to say thank you. THANK YOU. THANK YOU! You have helped me overcome, and way WAY more than u could ever know. 🥰🥰😘😘Love ya lady! YOURE AWESOME.

I've never gridded, going to try that now!

Thanks for the video. I have a 320,000 stitch project I am eyeballing and this video helped.

This is my comfort cross stitch video. Thank you so much for explaining everything. ❤

hI JULES , I FOUND YOUR STICING BASICS GOOD. I AM A BEGINNER AT THE HOBBY, AND WHEN I MEAN A BEGINNER, I MEAN I HAVEN'T EVEN BOUGHT ANYTHING IN THE WAY OF A PATTERN, AND / OR ANY OTHER ITEM , SUCH AS FLOSS, HOOP, ETC. I AM SOMEONE THAT REALLY NEEDS TO BE HELD BY THE HAND, SO TO SPEAK, IN ORDER TO FOLLOW , AND REALLY GRASP THE IDEA, TILL I GET THE HANG OF WHAT I WANT, AND NEED TO DO. SO I HOPE I CAN COUNT ON YOU FOR HELP. THANKS FOR THE INFO I ALREADY RECEIVED.

Thank you for sharing!!!! Very helpful and informative,. Blessings and Gratitude

Great video am about to start my first full coverage cross stitch piece,great tips,Thankyou for sharing 🇳🇿❤️🪡

Lots of great information! Thank you.

I don’t know if your still stitching, but I wish I’d had discovered you before I started my stitch. I started one in 2013 then my wife passed away from CF. I put it on hold until today. It’s got over 60 colors and I’m just overwhelmed.

Holy mac & chz! You do the grid likes like that! That is amazing! I lose count and always get something wrong. I will be looking into doing this. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

So many great ideas; thank you!

I feel a little better starting "Stary Night"...a little😱. Thank you sooooo much🤗

My favorite part was 12:32 when you said: "☺️.....hi"

I just LOVE that video. I have started cross stitch about two months ago. Sadly, I had to frog many times and I almost abandonned the idea of cross stitching. Then with U Tube, I have discoverd griding and on top of line crossing at each 10th line, I also mark the center of that square. It has greatly helped. I also am trying to work with parking threads. A bit hard for me, but I guess I'll get better with time. Q Snap have been a challenge with me since I have arthritis and could get my embroidery off the QSnap. Someone told me to insert a strong ribbon before snapping your fabric so it is easier to just pull on ribbon to get your stuff out. I am now a follower's of your channel.

I started putting my current project in a book sleeve if it’s not too big with the floss in the little floss bags hooked onto a carabiner clip and a little case for the scissors and needles. It keeps it pretty safe when I travel with it.

As usual, great video, Jules! I hope you have given reluctant stitchers the confidence they need to work on larger, full coverage pieces, because there really is nothing that compares to the feeling of completing one. The only thing I might hazard to add is to try ALL the things! Try parking, and railroading, and all the different ways of storage, and different needles, hoops, fabrics, and threads. Try counting pins! (Ok, maybe my age is showing a bit with that one.) My point is there are so many ways to do any single thing, that it's not hard to find someone who already has a solution for you to take out and test drive - and you never know, you might be inspired to come up with something new that we all need to know about. Just enjoy it. If you're trying something and it's not fun, don't do it anymore. There are no CS police, and no judgments. Just hours of joy.

Love your ideas. In order to keep cost down I use ziploc snack bags instead of the floss away bags. I clip the floss number off the skein of thread and tape it on the inside of the bag. Just finished a 15 year project. Bunch of lilacs by scarlet quince. The challenge of a lifetime. Love a lot of they patterns but not sure I want to tackle another. It did turn out beautiful!

Okay - you just blew me away with the griding technique! I had never seen nor been taught that! How exciting! Love Love Love this video in 2021! :)

Thanks Jules. I don't tend to do the larger scale pieces, but I love your passion for them. It makes me contemplate the possibilities.

Thank you this video. I am working on my first full coverage. I wish I had seen this before I started.

Love, love, love, your passion for what you do and the passion for teaching and encouraging us. I am feeling so well after this video. Yeah!!!❤️

Greetings from the uk, just found your RU-vid channel and I have just learnt how to grid my fabric! Thank you.

You and I do so many things the same..the whole time you were explaining I was nodding my head. Love your videos, I have subscribed and look forward to watching more to come. I have been stitching for almost 50 years, I started when I was 12 and just turned 60, but I feel your never to old to learn some tricks,tips others may have. I have done large pieces in the past and though finished swore never again!..lol hence my next project is 25 x 36! They say never say never..lol I'm still not sure if I want to tackle it in 18 or keep with the 14. I need magnifying glasses with 14 so 18 might be a stretch.? Thanks for the video.

I stumbled across your video doing research on a very major project of mine. Long story short my mother in law is amazing, and her dog daisy was the best dog, she was her emotial support animal and sadly we had to put her down last month. I found a site to make a pattern from a picture. So I took a photo of daisy and made a pattern. I'm planning to cross stich that picture and frame it and give it to her as a gift. But I'm nervous because this would be the biggest cross stitch project I would attempt and I want it to be perfect. I'm I'm excited to start gathering the supplies and start working on it. I need to print out the pattern still to see just how big it would be but I'm just so excited to start this. Thank you for this video. It was amazing and filled with useful tips.

I stitch w pregridded fabric and use my blue marker to number the columns and mark the intersecting lines, not the entire line. Agree w so much of what you say.

I know that cross-stitching isn't a big thing right now but I enjoy it and this video really helped me with a big pattern I was going to work on. thank you.

I love the time you take to explain the cost effectiveness of larger projects, definitely not something I considered! Also the encouragement, you are like the girls basketball coach of cross stitching!

I am so happy I found you!!!! I myself am a self taught crosstitcher and I just learned today that the crosstitch I love to do is called full coverage crosstitch!! Yes I have alot to learn in terms of technical crosstitch words like frogging lol

Thanks - especially the remarks about patterns - I agree it is so important to choose the correct one. Love your large project bag which I suspect is more easily available in the US. One small correction which I am sure won't bother most of your watchers that was the Houses of Parliament (in the foreground) not Westminster Abbey which is the grey building in the background!

Think I'm in love with you Jules - just started a new large project and found your video very informative. All the best, James

Yes, this is how I am stitching & storing..... Thanks

:D I've stitched that frog one! My grandma bought me the kit when I first started out in cross stitching. My current 2 ongoing projects are both full coverage.

Thanks so much for your great video! Love your fresh approach and your encouragement in that I can do a large project!

Great video of how you tackle your large projects. Thanks for sharing.

Great video Jules! Love your videos. I’m glad you are getting ready to start the baseball pattern. I like it. Great point about the expense of large projects. The time it takes for them it ends up being a reasonable cost! Love the see your stuff bags! I have 3 of them that I use for my large full coverage projects.

I am about to start a big project and this was so helpful! Thank you! I subbed and excited to watch your stitch with me videos!

Mine is 5ftx6ft working right now while watching with you..

Just discovered you and find you amazing! I’m fairly new to cross stitching but I really enjoy doing it. Your very inspiring- thank you!

This answers all my questions!!

OMG! I've always marked the grid by sewing a contrasting thread every 10 squares, it is a necessary pain in the neck....i've nver thought of using a marker! Game changer!

Very interesting to see how you do it. Thank you and happy stitching ✖️✖️✖️

Hi Jules. I love you videos. If you ever have time, would you show how you put a large large material on your hoop and what you do with excess material so it’s not bothering your stitching. Again I love all your videos. Thank you

nice it was. i serched for base ball in cross stitch collectibles but did not see it. think of starting a big project to relieve myself daily after work

This was super helpful! I am preparing to start my first HAED (God's Loving Touch)! Thank you for taking the time to make this video!!

Thanks Jules, it help so much, now I'm ready to go !!!

Thank you! I jumped into a project and I feel well organized and prepared all due to your recommendations. You are awesome!

Thank you for sharing tips on big projects. I'm just got HEAD this will definitely help

Great video! I've done several large (full-coverage) projects but I'm getting ready to start my largest to date which is about 120K stitches. It is a fractal pattern from Cross Stitch Collectibles. I prefer a small hoop when working on these too. When I do large projects I always make sure to highlight my pattern as I go so that I can easily track what I've finished. I also determine where my top left corner is on my material and the stitch a TL way up in the corner. Often with large projects the corners are just background and it can be confusing to determine if that is the top or bottom of the project, so that is why I stitch a TL in the corner. The last thing I will mention is that usually on Black Friday week Joanne's has their DMC floss really cheap so I typically purchase all the floss that I will need for the entire year of stitiching (sure I add a few unplanned projects throughout the year, but this takes care of most). For example in 2018 I have 28 projects planned to start this year so I determined what DMC floss I needed (about 350 skiens) and purchase them all at once. Happy Stitching Jules!

I want to get into stitching and this really helped me! Also your videos are super nice to watch (even if the quality is not super high), you're super sympathetic!

Great organisation ! Great inspiration ! Many thanks to you.

this was so helpful, you’re energy explaining everything was so motivating & gave me that extra encouragement to rlly start a project i’ve been too overwhelmed to begin because of the size. thank you!

These tips are awesome, thank you! Starting my first large full-coverage project and this is all really helpful.

Your work is exceptional, and you pretty much got me to start cross stitching! Thank you so much for all of the time you put into your love of cross stitch, it's so inspiring!

HI Jules, I love your large peace it's amazing. Thank you for sharing it is very useful video, have a great stitching week.

This is my first video of you and I love it!! And the motivational notes you gave 🥺 It makes me feel more better that I should start a full coverage project. Thank you so much!

Awesome video and so useful! I have only done kits so far, so this is very helpful and inspiring for me to try and buy pattern and materials separately and do some of the beautiful patterns out there. Love your channel!

This was so helpful. I've done large full coverage projects (or what I thought were large before I saw your example) but it's been years and I've forgotten a lot of the little details about how I kept things organized.

Hey Jules! Great video. You are an excellent teacher. I have received Bruton Parish Church so far. :) I can't wait until i am done with xmas presents so i can start. The Cross stitch collectibles site is amazing. I hope you, hubby and fur babies are all well and happy.

I love your video's too. I also like when you have stitching sessions.

Thank you for the informative video. This helps ,e plan out my first big project.

thank you so much! I learnt to cross stitch when I was a child, about 7-8 years old, and didnt get back to it until this year, 29 years old and I was quick to pick it back up but was focusing on kits where everything just comes as is and no need to worry. But my latest project is a PDF pattern so it was a whole new world for me, not having a pattern printed onto the canvas, not having everything provided BUT its turning out beautifully and I'm very happy with it. It's a smaller piece (I'm using a 25cm hoop to give context, it all fits inside of that) so I dont feel too overwhelmed. But I've just found my next project and I'm excited but scared about it! It's a free PDF but doesn't give a whole lot of details about what to actually do, basically just the pattern and colours. All it says is 300x180 but now I'm looking at it and I have no idea what size that is, what count canvas I should use or how many strands 😱 I am thinking of doing 18 count because that is the most common I can find where I live, do I just do 300/18 and 180/18 to get the size canvas I need in inches? and 2 strands sounds about right for 18 count?

Just found your blog and YT sites. Thank you so much for doing these vids. I've been stitching for many many years and just a few years ago decided to tackle a crazybigGigantor project from HAED. I'm learning a lot from you. I love that you are in Denver as my extended family is in Steamboat. Glad to be getting to know ya!

Really love your viendo you speak up and are very clear in your opinions and directions. First time watching you looking forward for more information. Thank you Sue

I absolutely love your videos and large projects. Fabulous teaching. Gone to Crossstitch Collectibles. Love it.

I've been cross stitching on and off since I was 8 and I'm thinking of finally doing a full coverage piece after my current project. I'm honestly very intimidated and I'm having a heck of a time trying to find the cloth big enough for it. The pattern is 35"x20" and I've never used grids before but they sound perfect for this! Thank you for your advice!

Thank you for making this video. I have not seen it before. I have just bought myself a heaven and earth design and, like most, I am hoping it will go well. This will be a first really large project for me. I'm glad that so far I have done everything on your suggested list. I think what I really like is motivation , or is it that that is being replaced by fear ( lots of money spent and fear of a horrible or abandoned end result). You know what they say about the road to hell...

Such a great video! I've just finished my first non-full-coverage cross stitch, so now I'm really tempted to try a full coverage project but it's pretty daunting tbh... Thanks for the tips!

what a wonderfully helpful video. Love and appreciate you!! Thank you!

I am using the Frixion pens and they are so good! I recommend them!

Thank you so much for helping me. I appreciate it very much. It was very helpful. Now I can't wait to start on my project. I have had it for years. Lorraine.

Thank you for this video. You are extremely helpful. 🙂

Thank you so much for making this video. I am a newbie and learning how to cross-stitch from RU-vid tutorials. This was a great tutorial. I feel very overwhelmed with cross-stitching especially with the large projects and the different cloths. After watching this I feel confident that I can take on a large project.

I love your video and personality! You truest love cross stitching and it’s fabulous! As a beginner, I found your video extremely helpful. I would love to know more about loading your Aida fabric on a hoop, making your fabric more manageable as when you first buy Aida, it is very stiff, and also watch you as you organize your threads on the bobbins i.e separating your threads, winding them, etc. You definitely have me as a subscriber and thank you for your video!

Thanks so much for sharing all your knowledge! I love your enthusiasm and open attitude. I'm hoping to tackle a full coverage soon and this really helps. Adele (watching from Yorkshire in the UK).

Great video! Thank you so much! I’ve been working on my large project for a year and a half now and I don’t know anyone else who does it so I was feeling very self conscious about how long it was taking me and some of my techniques and you make it seem so easy and casual