Hi, I'm Aubree — I write and maintain Counted & Crossed.
I got into cross-stitch the way a lot of people probably do: a kit picked up on a whim, a few frustrating evenings of miscounted grids, and then, somewhere around my third project, an actual habit. What kept me hooked wasn't just the stitching — it was finding out how deep the history goes. The same X-shaped stitch that's on a sweary kit from an Etsy shop today was also worked into linen by hand centuries before sewing machines existed, and somewhere in between it passed through Victorian parlours, church mourning cloths, immigrant sampler traditions, and a lot of very patient hands.
Most sites I found while learning covered one slice of that — either the history, or the how-to, or the shop-the-latest-kit content — but rarely all of it in one place, and rarely without either being dryly academic or completely uninterested in where any of it came from. Counted & Crossed is my attempt to fix that: one site that treats a medieval sampler and a gleefully profane modern pattern as part of the same continuous story, because they are.
Here's roughly how the site is organized:
- History & Origins — where the craft actually comes from, era by era.
- Techniques & Stitch Types — every stitch and working method, explained plainly.
- Traditional Samplers — the stitch-reference roots of the craft: band samplers, alphabets, mourning pieces, and more.
- Modern & Subversive Styles — where cross-stitch went once it stopped being polite.
- Materials & Fabrics Guide — the reference pages I wish I'd had when I started.
- Reference & How-To Guides — practical help for exactly the moment you're stuck mid-project.
- Tools & Calculators — the small utilities I built for my own projects, because I got tired of doing this math by hand.
If you spot something wrong, out of date, or missing — or just want to say hi — the contact page reaches me directly.