Crafty Combinations: Crochet & Cross Stitch
16 mins read

Crafty Combinations: Crochet & Cross Stitch

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It’s no secret that I’m a cross stitch fiend — but I actually enjoy a lot of different crafts and am always looking to try new things! And yet I always try and tie it back into cross stitch somehow. Whether that be sewing Q-snap cozies, making beaded scissor fobs, or getting creative with how I finish my cross stitch pieces. A few years ago, I learned to crochet and just… haven’t made much with it still despite enjoying the process. So let’s fix that by combining cross stitch crochet!

I originally just wanted to cover the obvious — cross stitching onto crochet pieces, but as I was researching this I stumbled across and was reminded of a few other options to combine the two crafts, and am excited to go over those options with you!

I’m still very much a crochet beginner, so mostly I’ll be linking to other people’s tutorials here as I’m learning right along with you. But I hope you find this listing of ideas a useful reference. I’ve done the research for you and put it all in one place. Perhaps some options you haven’t considered before!

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Cross Stitching onto Crochet Projects

Let’s start off with the most obvious combo — Cross Stitching onto a finished crochet piece. From what I could find online, the most common options are stitching onto an area of crochet made up of single crochet, or onto Tunisian crochet.

Yarn or Embroidery Floss?

Most of the tutorials listed below reference using yarn to cross stitch. And that’s likely because it needs to be thick enough to get the coverage you need. However, it’s all relative. If you’re crocheting with thinner yarns or floss and a smaller hook to begin with, you can absolutely use embroidery floss for this as well. It’s all about scale.

Cross Stitch on Single Crochet

The single crochet method is fairly straightforward. It’s one of the first stitches you learn in crochet and works up pretty quickly. It makes for a tight piece and is very versatile.

From what I could tell, the main consideration here is that you want your stitches to be fairly tight weaved, and that the stitches end up on a slight diagonal.

Tutorials found online:

Cross Stitching on My First Crochet Project

But of course I wanted to try it myself as well. So I pulled out the very first crochet project I ever did – this slouchy hat from a free pattern on a blog that unfortunately no longer exists. It’s pretty simple though. Double crochet top to bottom and then a single crochet band to keep it on your head. So I thought I’d stitch some simple patterns on there.

The band isn’t very tall – just 8 or so useable rows to work with. So rather than complicate it I decided to just do a basic diagonal design with some black yarn for contrast.

It actually stitched up pretty easily. They are slightly diagonal, but not overly so and it was real easy to tell where the stitches would go. Would definitely recommend. I do imagine it would get a bit trickier with fluffy yarn though so do a swatch if you’re worried!

Cross Stitch on Tunisian Crochet

Tunisian crochet has always seemed super daunting to me. Yet I’ve always wanted to try it. There seems to be a lot less content about it though. From what I can tell, it’s a combination of knitting and crochet techniques and makes for much tighter more uniform weave. And seems to reduce the slight angle you get with cross stitching over single crochet!

Here’s some tutorials I found online with examples of cross stitch done onto Tunisian crochet:

Photo example from TLYCBlog:

I still want to try Tunisian crochet one day, but unfortunately today is not that day.

Cross Stitch on Knitwork

Okay, I know this article is about crochet but while researching I came across this instagram reel from jackibeanusa of someone doing knitted colorwork by essentially stitching over a plain knit hat. And while it’s not crosses (they’re still the V’s associated with knitting), it is very much a similar concept! So just know if you’re more of a knitter you can make some pretty awesome designs without having to do stranded colorwork. Check out the reel to see how it’s done!

Cross Stitching Crochet Patterns

Not feeling like crocheting? Don’t know how? Another fun option I found is cross stitching patterns that look like crochet designs! the.great.pike on Instagram had the wonderful idea of cross stitching granny squares based on the books they read rather than doing a full size crochet book quilt! These are stitched onto plastic canvas and will be turned into cute little magnets. Such a fun idea!

If you’d like to do this too, I did find a free Granny Square Pattern from FatQuarterShop.

I did also find a few other patterns inspired by crochet, such as this diagonal Granny Square Quilt by StitchedModern. And a whole slew of granny square designs by Carolyn Manning.

Also some adorable floral and heart granny squares by SkyShipStitch!

Definitely a fun way to combine crafts!

Crocheting Cross Stitch Patterns

Okay, so if you can cross stitch crochet patterns, can you also crochet cross stitch patterns? Yes!

Rather than cross stitching onto your crochet, you can instead follow a cross stitch pattern but make the color changes as you go! Okay, it doesn’t have to be a cross stitch pattern, it could be a beadwork pattern or simply pixel art, but the idea is still there.

As before, there’s a few different options available here for stitches to use.

Single Crochet Tapestry

Basically, the idea is to make a tapestry of just single crochet, but changing colors as you go. You can start from the top or bottom and work in rows, doing one pixel at a time.

Tutorials Found Online:

These tutorials of course all feature yarn because that’s the most common material used for crochet — Yarn. But don’t forget you can crochet with embroidery thread as well! If you need more color options or don’t want your finished piece to take up as much room.

An excellent example of this is hookforahandicraft on Instagram, who is currently working on an absolutely EPIC crochet of the entire Stardew Valley Map using embroidery thread. Yes, the whole map. This is actually what inspired me to write this article tbh. It’s still pretty early stages, so instead here’s an example they did of Sebastian in the same technique. Absolutely give them a follow if you want updates on that map though. 😉

Trying Tapestry Crochet Myself

Part of the fun of this article for me is to try out some of these techniques. As I’ve said before — I’m here to learn too! That’s why most of this article is links to other people’s tutorials.

So I attempted to crochet one of my mini free patterns – the Lunar Moth with a few adjustments for whatever color yarn I had on hand.
As is expected when learning any new craft, my first attempt was less than impressive:

Asking for help on the PixelStitch Discord pointed me in the direction of the Lala Crochet video I linked above. And with a little frogging and some technique adjustments that same swatchwas looking much better the second time around:

After several hours of stitching I realized the black yarn I used was slightly thicker than the others and it was causing this to not be very square. I wasn’t about to frog all of it by then so I just finished up, washed it, and blocked it.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But for my first attempt I think it turned out pretty decent.

And this does help highlight how different designing for cross stitch and designing for crochet can be. For example, the thinner moons don’t work very well in tapestry crochet. In the cross stitch the squares at the end are only connected diagonally to the rest of the moon. This works fine in cross stitch, even without a quarter stitch to connect them. But looks very disconnected in crochet.

So don’t be afraid to make adjustments to a pattern as you go to make it work better in its new medium!

Tunisian Crochet Intarsia

Just like before, you can achieve a similar technique using Tunisian crochet and stranded colorwork. I’ve mostly found examples of simple designs, but as long as you’re willing to juggle all those yarns, you can make it as simple or complicated as you’d like.

Once again, I couldn’t find as many resources for Tunisian crochet. If you have any suggestions for learning Tunisian, please let me know!
Tutorials found online:

Granny Squares

One last option to crochet your patterns or pixel art is to make just a ton of granny squares in the colors you need and then stitch those together. This has the potential to get very big very fast (even if you make your squares relatively small), so this is better used for smaller designs and motifs. But it is so fun to see!

Check out this example of a pixelated cushion by MaRRose:

Now imagine a larger design done up as a wall tapestry or something. This technique also allows for half-stitches, as you can absolutely do a square half in one color and half in another.

I did make a couple of squares using a 2mm hook and embroidery thread (all 6 strands), but I don’t quite have time for making a ton of these right now, so I just tested out some small granny squares I found to see what size they’d end up being. That way, I can properly plan a project later. I again used my cone of black because I have no idea how much thread this uses up and skeins are getting expensive lately.

In case you’d like to try them yourself, the larger one on the left is the ‘Tiny Granny Square‘ from Hook to Loop. While the smaller one is the ‘Small Granny Square‘ from Crochet Again.

Crochet Which Looks Like Cross Stitch

Now we’re getting a bit meta — while searching for cross stitch patterns of crochet design I instead found this tutorial by Crochet Beja for how to make a puffy crochet stitch that looks like crosses on the front. It is super cute and it makes me wonder if you could do this with colorwork and what that’d look like. But hey if you just want a fun X texture on your crochet project, this has you covered!

Crocheting Hoop Embellishments

Here’s one option I’ve actually covered before in my Hoop Decorating article. There’s a ton of ways to decorate your hoops if you’re the kind of person that uses hoops to finish their projects. And one of those is by crocheting onto the hoop itself!

Here’s the one I did back then when I was still learning how to crochet. It worked up pretty easily, if a bit awkwardly around that wood.

Mine was stitched using this free crochet pattern on BusyBeingJennifer.

But I had also found 3 other crochet embroidery hoop patterns by Lilla Björn Crochet that I keep meaning to go back and try! Too bad I don’t finish my projects in hoops very often. 🙁

Yarn Cross Stitch & Floss Crochet

Okay this last category is a bit of a cop-out so I’m lumping them together. Rather than combining cross stitch and crochet literally, how about just borrowing the materials from one craft to use in the other? this is another fun way to merge your two hobbies!

You can cross stitch with any type of thread onto anything you’re willing to put holes into. So it stands to reason there’s absolutely projects that can be done cross stitching with yarn leftover from your crochet projects. One example I see often is cross stitching onto a pegboard, since it already has the holes ready for you. For example, this pegboard by DreamALittleBigger.

I’ve also seen various example of people stitching onto bentwood chairs! Like this awesome rocking chair found on reddit stitched by u/GegeBrown :

Similarly, as I’ve mentioned a few times here: you can crochet using embroidery floss (or even sewing thread!)

Often lumped in with Micro Crochet, there’s a ton of tutorials and designs out there for you try specific to embroidery thread or crochet thread, such as this Mini Flower pattern by Crafters Autonomous. But you could theoretically stitch any pattern you want with embroidery thread as long you’re okay with it being smaller than originally designed!

There’s actually a ton of other crafts you can do with Embroidery Thread — I have a yearly challenge I like to do called Choose Your Floss Adventure. Here I’ve linked to tutorials and free patterns for over 30 crafts you can do with embroidery thread for you to try out without having to buy a ton of new materials!

This year I’m trying out – you guessed it – Chicken Scratch! Okay, but also micro crochet. Good excuse to put together this article, after all. I am also trying out some chicken scratch, though. Which I’ll probably pop over on my YouTube once it’s finished and edited.

Anyway, I took my cone of 310 and a 2mm hook and made a tiny, if lumpy, top hat. How it managed to absorb this much cat hair in the half hour it took, I have no idea. But it IS pretty cute even if the brim won’t lay flat. Now I’m off to plan a cute little project to put this tiny hat on.

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