Cross Stitching an 8-Bit Wumpus

Here’s a list of what you’ll need to get started. You can find everything on Amazon, and on any site that sells DMC embroidery thread.

A wood 3” embroidery hoop
A piece of 14-count Aida cloth, 6”x6”
An embroidery needle, size 24
Print the grid pattern at the bottom of this post
Embroidery floss in 7 DMC colors:
1. 3839 (Dark Purple)
2. 3755 (Dark Blue)
3. 973 (Yellow)
4. 3840 (Light Purple)
5. 828 (Light Blue)
6. 900 (Red)
7. 310 (Black)

Today you’re going to learn how to 8-bit paint with a needle and thread in 10 easy steps!

STEP ONE

Putting the Aida cloth into the hoop

If you stitch without putting the fabric in the hoop, you’re gonna get bunching and scrunching and no one wants that.

Make it tight as a drum, straight, and as centered as you possibly can, then hand tighten the screw

If you’re a leftie, you might want the screw upper right corner.

If you’re a rightie, you might want it in the lower left corner.

Keeping the screw out of the way prevents your thread from catching on it all the time, which is irritating and ugh. Find the spot you like it in best. It’s really a personal preference thing.

STEP TWO

Threading your needle with floss

For this piece, you’re gonna use one strand of floss at a time.

To pull one piece of floss out of a cord of many, find a lone end on one side of the cord and pull it straight out while lightly gripping the rest. It’ll slide out like a greased pool noodle that way. Any doubts, youtube has a wealth of how-tos on separating floss.

Start with LIGHT PURPLE for this piece. That’ll be your first color.

To thread your needle

Fold your floss piece in half
Put the 2-piece end through the eye of your needle, so the long side has a loop, and the shorter side has the two tails at the end, like in the photo

This gives you a double strand of floss and an easy way to secure the thread onto the fabric, which you’ll see very soon.

STEP THREE

Find the center on your pattern & on your fabric

Always start a cross stitch in the center of your hoop. You’d hate to have a wonky off-center thing, right? Starting in the center really helps.

The center of the project is shown on your pattern by cross hairs. Use that to see what color you’re starting with. We’re starting with LIGHT PURPLE, and I’ve chosen to start with the square on the pattern top right of the cross hairs.

Poke your needle through your fabric as close to the center as you can, from the back and out through the front. Don’t pull it all the way through yet. Where you’ve just poked through is the bottom left corner of the square we’ve chosen to start with.

Poke your needle back down through the fabric, at the top right corner of the little fabric grid square. On the front of your piece, this will make a little backslash /

Turn your fabric over so you’re looking at the back.

STEP FOUR

Secure your thread onto the fabric

You’ve poked your needle up and back again, making your very first /.

From the back, now you have both your loop end and needle end sticking out.

Put your needle end through the loop end, and pull it until it’s nice and snug. Now your thread is secure!

You’ll learn what kind of tension works best. Too tight and you yank the holes in the fabric bigger, too loose and you don’t get clean Xs. Your instincts will tell you what’s just right, Goldilocks.

Time to keep stitching!

STEP FIVE

Fill your grid with Xs!

It’s easy to make multiple Xs at once. Count how many you need to make to finish your row in this color from the place we started at, all the way to the end. In this case, it’s SEVEN.

Proceed merrily along your row, making SEVEN /’s

After your 7th /, you’re going to double back around to complete your Xs, so put your needle through in the bottom right corner of your last /, as shown above.

You can choose to make one X at a time, or whip out a row at a time. It’s up to you!

STEP SIX

Completing your Xs

This is the easy part! Just go back down your row finishing X’s!

PRO TIP:

Your first half of the X should always run in the same direction. If you started with /, every X should start with /. This keeps things much cleaner looking, trust me.

It doesn’t matter how you start your Xs, from the top or from the bottom of the square, as long as you try your best to remember which way your first / always goes.

STEP SEVEN

Fill up that grid, one color at a time!

Just keep counting the squares on the pattern and filling them in on your fabric!

Here I’m showing you the first color completed, but on the first row I started each X with /, and every other row I started each X with \. See how weird that top row looks cause the sheen is different? Remember to start every X in the same direction.

PRO TIP:

I write “1. / 2. \” in BIG FAT BOLD on a piece of paper and keep it nearby to remember.

WHEN YOUR THREAD STRAND RUNNETH OUT

Securing an old piece and starting a fresh piece is easy!

Finishing off a strand that ran out: Run your needle through 3-5 stitches in the back, then clip the extra with a pair of scissors. You don’t want knots, cause those cause lumps in cross stitches.

Starting a new strand: Thread your needle like you learned, and on your next /, put your needle end through the loop end in the back like you did before. Easy peesy!

Same thing when you’re starting a new color!

STEP 8

Fill in all the colors until you just have dark purple left

STEP 9

The Background & Your Initials

THE BACKGROUND

Your pattern shows a simple background, but you have enough dark purple floss to create yourself a really cool background in a unique shape! Get creative! Go nuts!

You can sketch it out on graph paper, or with a pencil, mark it out right onto your grid pattern paper.

YOUR INITIALS

You have enough left over RED to put your initials anywhere you want on your piece.

You can “draw lines” by making straight stitches from one grid dot to the next.

I used straight stitches to outline Wumpus’s nostrils in dark purple. You can do stuff like that too!

STEP 10

Display Your Masterpiece!

DISPLAY IT IN THE HOOP

Unscrew your hoop just enough to slide the screw up to be centered at the top, and tighten it as tight as you can get it (a screwdriver helps).

Trim the excess fabric off the back, then run a line of glue all around the back to keep the fabric from escaping or fraying. Hot glue and gorilla glue work great.

Since it’s wood, you can even remove your hoop and stain it or paint it before you permanently secure your art in it if you want!

DISPLAY IT IN A FRAME

Any 3”x3” frame will house your work of art beautifully.

Nice work! Display your piece proudly.