Cross stitching, and stitching in general, has been a life saver for me and many others throughout the years. It has helped me cope with all the challenges life brings and I firmly believe that stitching has played an important role in my mental health over the years. If you reach out and speak to any other stitcher, you will hear a similar story as well. I thought it was important to highlight some of the reasons that stitching can improve your life and health. Especially for anyone looking to start a new hobby or pick up an old forgotten one so here are the top 5 important reasons to pick up your needle and start stitching today.
1. Improve Hand Eye Coordination
There is no double that stitching takes hand eye coordination. From threading the needle to finding the right placement for the needle in your fabric, it plays an important role in cross stitching. Hand eye coordination is important for so many reasons, whether it’s being able to write with relative ease or use a knife and fork, it touches almost every aspect of our lives. Although hand eye coordination can start to decline with lack of use as well as with age, it can also be improved with practice. Stitching is the perfect opportunity to work on these skills. Maintaining dexterity and coordination in old age is important to maintain independence and a sense of confidence and self worth. Even if you are still a youngster improving and maintaining these skills offer a ton of benefits later in life.
2. Stitching is Meditative
Meditation is a widely popular activity with countless benefits. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t always involve sitting in a yoga pose with your hands resting on your knees and your pointer and thumb forming a circle. While traditional meditation can effectively quiet the mind and soothe the senses, there are other ways to reap its benefits. Engaging in meditative activities, such as stitching, can be just as beneficial. This simple and repetitive action allows the brain to rest and unwind.
3. Improves Creativity and Fires Up Your Brain
The third of our 5 important reasons to pick up your needle, is to improve creativity. Stitching gives you an opportunity to let your creative mind take over. From choosing a pattern, fabric, colours, buttons or charms, we have complete control over the end product and what we produce. We can opt to frame our project, getting to chose, the frame and matte, glass or hoop. We can decide to create a pillow or a bag out of our end product, really the options are endless. This creativity allows us to exercise a part of our brain that is perhaps dormant in our daily jobs and life. Why is creativity important? That could be a whole blog post on it’s own. Creativity, allows for us to learn innovation, problem-solving and better communication skills as well as reducing stress. So the benefits are huge and stitching can play a wonderful role in improving our creativity.
4. Part of a Welcoming Community
You can be part of a wonderful community. Stitchers are a welcoming and sharing bunch, at least in my experience. There are a lot of options for joining and being part of a stitching community. You can seek out a physical group, many libraries or community centers have stitching groups that meet regularly. If you can’t find one in your community, maybe consider starting one yourself.
You can also join an online community. There is no shortage of wonderful and fun cross stitching groups on Facebook. Some groups have games and challenges for motivation, while others facilitate online buying and selling and knowledge sharing. Stitching community’s are a fabulous way to broaden your knowledge, fins friends and share in the amazing and fun art of cross stich so go our and search out a great community that suits you today!
5. The Art of Making Mistakes
In my various projects, I often add my own personal touch to the pattern. This means that sometimes I make mistakes and have to improvise or alter the pattern to fit the mistake. While pulling out stitches (also known as frogging) is sometimes the best solution, other times it makes more sense to just improvise. Finding the balance between these options can be challenging, but improvising can lead to fun and unique mistakes. Each mistake and improvisation makes the project completely unique to me, and no other work of art will be exactly the same as my final creation. This thought makes mistakes a little easier to accept, although, let’s face it, nobody enjoys making mistakes, especially when the only solution is to frog for an entire evening.
