How long does a cross stitch take?

Why there's no single answer

Ask ten stitchers how fast they go and you'll get ten different numbers, and most of them will be guesses. Speed depends on how long you've been stitching, how busy the design is, the fabric, the light, and whether the TV is on. The same person can be much faster on a block of one color than on a patch of scattered shading.

So any figure you read online, including the ones below, is a rough reference at best. The estimate worth having is built from two numbers that are specific to you and your project: how many stitches the design has, and how many stitches you complete in an hour.

Start with the stitch count

The stitch count is the core of the estimate, and it's not the same as the design size. A chart 100 by 100 stitches is 10,000 squares, but you only stitch all of them if the design covers the fabric edge to edge. Most designs leave the background bare, so the real count is lower, sometimes much lower.

Ways to get the number:

• Pattern listings usually give the design size in stitches, something like 130 wide by 78 high, sometimes labeled as the stitch count. That's the grid, not the number of crosses, so treat it as the upper limit.
• If you can see the chart, estimate the share that's stitched. A motif that fills about half the grid on a 100 by 100 chart is around 5,000 stitches.
• If you made the chart from a photo with the photo to pattern converter, the total number of stitches is shown under the preview.

Count full crosses here. Backstitch, French knots and partial stitches take a different amount of time, so treat them as a separate job (more on that below).

Time your own pace

This takes an evening or two and makes every future estimate better.

1. Pick a section that's typical of the design you're about to start. Not the easy block of solid color, and not the worst patch of confetti either.
2. Stitch for 30 to 60 minutes at your normal pace, with your normal interruptions: threading the needle, checking the chart, reaching for your tea.
3. Count the full crosses you finished and divide by the time. Forty-five stitches in twenty minutes is 135 an hour.
4. Do it again on another day and average the two. Some stitchers retest every month or so, because pace drifts with mood, light and the project.

Timing a stretch of real stitching beats timing a sprint. Your real pace includes all the small stops, and so does the project.

What other stitchers report

For a sanity check, these are figures stitchers have published for themselves. In a long-running thread on a cross stitch forum, members who timed their work reported between about 30 and 200 stitches an hour. The slowest figures came from a Degas reproduction worked mostly in blended threads, and the 150 to 200 an hour came from someone who stitched samples for an online kit company. A cross stitch blogger who times herself regularly reports around 250 an hour on a small multi-color piece.

These are individual self-reports, not a survey. They do show how wide the range is. If your pace is 80 an hour, you're not doing it wrong.

A worked example

This is how the numbers combine, using three example paces. They're not averages, just round numbers to show the spread.

To turn hours into a finish date, divide by the time you actually stitch in a typical week. 67 hours at 5 hours a week is about 13 or 14 weeks. The same project at an hour a week is well over a year, which is worth knowing before you start a gift.

Add the extras separately. Time a stretch of backstitch the same way you timed your crosses, or count the backstitch lines and estimate. Then leave room for washing, pressing and framing at the end.

One project from start to finish

Say you've picked a chart that's 120 by 90 stitches, and the design covers roughly 60 percent of the grid, with the rest left as bare fabric. That's 10,800 squares, of which about 6,480 are stitched.

You time yourself twice on a typical section and average 110 stitches an hour. The crosses alone come to about 59 hours. You stitch around four hours a week, so that's roughly 15 weeks of evenings. Then you time a few minutes of backstitch, find the outlines will take another six or seven hours, and add a couple of weeks for washing and framing. Call it four and a half months. That's close enough to plan a gift around.

Very large pieces

The same math explains why big full-coverage pieces take years. A design 300 by 400 stitches with every square filled is 120,000 crosses. At 150 an hour that's 800 hours, and at ten hours a week it's about a year and a half of steady stitching. Nobody is doing anything wrong when a project like that is still on the frame two years later.

The time before the first stitch

The stitch count ignores everything that happens before you start: sorting floss onto bobbins or a ring, labeling the colors with their symbols, finding the center, hooping or mounting the fabric on a frame, and maybe basting a grid of guide lines. On a small design that might be an hour. On a large chart with 50 colors it can be a whole evening or two, and it's worth counting if you're working to a date.

What slows a project down

Two charts with the same stitch count can take very different amounts of time. These are the usual reasons.

Confetti and frequent color changes cost the most. Every new thread is a start and a finish, and a pattern where each color appears as scattered singles may need a fresh thread every few stitches. Photo-realistic patterns are full of this.

Blended threads add time because you're managing two colors in one needle. Partial stitches and French knots are usually slower, stitch for stitch, than full crosses.

Fine fabric slows many people down. Stitching over one on high-count evenweave means small holes and closer counting, and dark fabric makes the holes harder to see.

Unpicking mistakes is the hidden cost. A miscount that goes unnoticed for a few rows can take as long to fix as it took to stitch. The guide to fixing cross stitch mistakes has ways to catch errors early.

How to make a project quicker

The biggest saving is fewer stitches. Changing the fabric count changes the finished size, not the number of crosses, so a 100 by 100 design is 10,000 stitches on 11-count and on 18-count alike. To cut the count, stitch a smaller version of the chart if you're designing it yourself, or leave the background as bare fabric instead of stitching it.

The next biggest saving is less confetti. A chart with fewer colors usually has fewer scattered singles and fewer thread changes, even when the stitch count stays the same. See how many colors a pattern needs.

Charts are ruled in blocks of 10 by 10 squares, and finishing one block at a time makes it easy to count your progress and keep your place. Whether you work cross-country or by parking threads changes how often you start new threads, so try both on a busy section and keep whichever is faster for you.

Tracking your real pace

Once you've started, note the date and the stitches done every week or two. After a month you'll have your actual pace on this project, which is better than any estimate made before you began. If the finish date is slipping, you'll know early enough to scale down the design or move the deadline.