There are two major, and significantly different, families of embroidery: counted-thread embroidery (which includes cross-stitch, but also blackwork, tatreez, and drawn-thread embroidery), and surface embroidery, which doesn’t require precise counting of threads in the base fabric.
Supplies
Both families of embroidery typically involves a hoop for stabilizing the fabric (usually under $5, can get it online for as little as $1.50 if you order several), needles, and thread, along with a base fabric. You can get a cheap kit for around $20 with all the supplies along with some instructions and a sampler design (something you can use to practice the stitches). If you find you enjoy this craft, it’s worth upgrading to high-quality embroidery floss where the color won’t bleed if it’s washed, and the threads separate easily. (DMC embroidery floss is $1-2 each.)
You can do surface embroidery on any woven fabric; counted-thread embroidery needs specific fabric. Aida cloth is commonly used for cross-stitch, comes in multiple colors, and costs $5-10 for enough for a project. If you want to add beads to your embroidery, beading thread costs $2-5 for a bobbin that will last a while, a tube of high-quality beads goes for $2-7 and beading needles cost $1-2.
Resources and Tutorials
- The RSN Stitchbank is perhaps the best and most comprehensive guide online to how to do hundreds of stitches drawn from many different cultural traditions. There are text descriptions, step-by-step photos, and videos for every single stitch, along with information about how and where it was used.
- Cross-Stitch Calculator helps you sort out what size fabric and needle you need for a cross-stitch project based on the design size
Embroidery and Data
Embroidery is well suited to representing all kinds of data. Cross-Stitch can resemble pixels, making it a good fit for embroidered traditional data visualizations like pie charts and bar charts (see Women’s Work). Because cross-stitch has a predictable number of maximum stitches based on the size of your embroidery, you can convert the different values of your data to percentages, map them to different color and then cross-stitch any design where the colors work out to the percentages you mapped.
Surface embroidery offers a flexible framework where you can use different Stitches as a way to convey certain kinds of data, along with color, shape, and size. Beads can add another facet of data (e.g. see Insomnia).