Hygge shawl

This pattern is all about cross stitch on crochet. Because practice makes perfect, we can practice this on the gauge square. There is a video tutorial for embroidery, so don’t be disheartened if the embroidery doesn’t work out as you imagined it right away.

Basics of cross stitch

Cross stitch consists of crosses that together form one stitch. You will be embroidering over crocheted stitches, similar to embroidering on embroidery fabric.

To understand the embroidery and read the accompanying diagrams, you need to visualize the embroidery grid on the crochet fabric. Take your gauge square and hold it up to the light. You will see the light shining through the 4 corners of each stitch (you might need to stretch the gauge square a bit to see this). These corners are the corners you’re going to make crosses in. The easiest way to make a cross stitch is as follows:

Imagine the four corners are called A, B, C and D, starting in the left upper corner and going clockwise.

• Step 1: Insert your threaded needle from the back to the front in B.
• Step 2: Insert your needle from the front to the back in D over the front of your work.
• Step 3: Insert your needle from the back to the front in A over the back of your work.
• Step 4: Insert your needle from the front to the back in C over the front of your work.

You repeat this for each stitch, keeping in mind that adjacent stitches share their corners (So the B and C corners of one stitch are the A and D corners of the stitch to the right). When you insert your needle in a corner, try not to split threads from previous cross stitches.

If you prefer to work your A-C line before your B-D line, that’s fine, too. It’s recommended to keep the order in which you make the ‘legs’ of your cross stitches the same throughout the project tough.

Yarn lengths

You will have to switch colours in the patterns (more on that later). Taking a long piece of colour might seem advantageous so you won’t run out when you embroider. However, long lengths are difficult to pull through and will knot. It’s better to have smaller pieces of ~50cm (20in). This means more ends to weave in, but it will benefit the look of your embroidery.

Starting, ending and changing colours

To start with a colour or switch colours while embroidering, weave your thread through a couple of stitches at the back of your work next to the stitch you want to embroider. Weave back and forth to secure your yarn. Now, you can start making cross stitches. When you finish a colour, weave your thread repeatedly and cut off the remaining yarn.

The embroidery diagrams are schematic representations of your cross-stitch pattern. Each square (pixel) in your diagram represents a stitch in your crochet fabric. Coloured squares are stitches that will be embroidered; white squares will not be embroidered.

As you can see, the embroidery diagram for the gauge square is made of 19 pixels in width and height, just as your gauge square is 19 sc in width and 19 rows in height. The letter in each coloured square represents the colour in which the cross stitch is worked. You can find the key to the letters in the colour table.

Embroidery diagrams aren’t read like crochet diagrams because there isn’t a set order in which you embroider your stitches. In the end, what counts is that all the stitches are made. Generally, it’s easiest to start reading a diagram on one side and work your way towards the other. It is essential to keep counting the stitches in the diagram and your work. To help you with the counting, thicker lines have been made in the diagram every five stitches.

To practice, look at the gauge square diagram on the next page. As you can see, each row in the pattern uses only one colour. It’s easiest to work in horizontal rows from top to bottom or bottom to top, finishing a row before you move on to the next colour.

Some patterns in this project will be straightforward, like this heart. Others will be more intricate and require you to switch colours more often. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter in which order you cross-stitch the stitches.

To practice, embroider the diagram on the next page of your gauge square. Don’t feel disheartened if it doesn’t look perfect on the first try. You will get lots of practice!

Blocking is wetting your crochet piece to give the stitches extra definition and to work out any minor flaws in the shape. When you block your work, the tension in the stitches is more evenly divided, meaning your stitches look better after blocking.

Because this project is worked on in one piece, we will block once at the end of part 13. Because Catona is 100% cotton and Stonewashed is a cotton blend, I recommend wet blocking over any other method. I have a full tutorial on wet blocking.