50 Fun Facts About Needlework

In needlework, what does UFO refer to when a project has sat untouched far longer than any WIP?

Unfinished object is the meaning: a UFO is a project set aside and at risk of never being completed. A WIP, or work in progress, is one the maker is still actively stitching.

Which famous hanging, nearly 70 metres long and showing the Norman conquest, is really an embroidery?

The Bayeux Tapestry is stitched onto linen rather than woven, so despite its name it is an embroidery. Its border holds the first known picture of Halley's Comet.

Which sewing tool was dropped as a Monopoly token in 2017, then voted back by the public in 2022?

The thimble was one of Monopoly's eight traditional metal pieces, and its return pushed out the T-Rex. People who collect thimbles are known as digitabulists.

Which knitted garment is named after the British earl who led the Charge of the Light Brigade?

The cardigan takes its name from James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, a general in the Crimean War. Coco Chanel is credited with popularising it for women.

The classic pincushion, often with a small emery-filled strawberry attached, is shaped like which fruit?

A tomato is the classic shape, and the strawberry hanging from it holds emery powder, an abrasive that cleans and sharpens pins. The design probably dates from the Victorian era.

In Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, which villain's knitting secretly records the names of the condemned?

Madame Defarge leads the tricoteuses, the women of the French Revolution said to have knitted beside the guillotine during executions. Dickens published the novel in 1859.

Which British Olympic diving champion was filmed knitting in the stands at the Tokyo and Paris Games?

Tom Daley took up knitting and crochet when the Covid lockdown began. He went on to present a Channel 4 competition to find Britain's best knitter.

What do knitters call ripping out rows of stitches, slang inspired by the sound of 'rip it, rip it'?

Frogging is the word, because a knitter repeating 'rip it' sounds like a croaking frog. Knitted loops that are not secured simply come undone when the yarn is pulled.

Which royal prisoner stitched the Oxburgh Hangings with Bess of Hardwick while held captive in England?

Mary, Queen of Scots worked the panels while in the custody of Bess's husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury. Most of the designs were based on four emblem books that Mary owned.

The oldest known knitted artifacts, dating from the 11th century, are socks found in which country?

Egypt is where those socks turned up, while the earliest known knitted items in Europe were made by Muslim knitters employed by Spanish Christian royal families.

Which basic knitting stitch is a knit stitch seen from the back, alternating with knit rows in stockinette?

Purl stitches look like wavy horizontal lines across the fabric, while knit stitches look like Vs stacked vertically. Alternating columns of the two produces stretchy ribbing.

Knitting every row when working flat makes which simplest of hand-knitted fabrics, one that barely curls?

Garter stitch stretches far more lengthwise than ribbing, which stretches sideways instead. Stockinette, by contrast, curls towards the front at the top and bottom edges.

Crochet takes its name from the French word for which small tool, a term used in 17th-century lace-making?

Hook is the meaning of the French word crochet, a diminutive of croche. In 17th-century France, crochetage named a stitch used to join separate pieces of lace.

Which crochet motif, worked in rounds from the centre outward, became a 1970s fashion craze?

Granny square clothing peaked in the 1970s, when vests, shorts and hats were all pieced from the motif. The squares are traditionally handmade and cannot be manufactured by machine.

Which street art, traced to Houston shop owner Magda Sayeg in 2005, covers public places in knitting?

Yarn bombing is said to have begun when Sayeg covered the door handle of her boutique with a custom-made cosy. It is also called guerrilla knitting or kniffiti.

Which scissors with saw-toothed blades cut a zigzag edge that limits how far woven cloth can fray?

Pinking shears do not stop fraying altogether, but they limit the length of each frayed thread. To pink once meant to decorate cloth by punching small holes in it.

Which mending technique stretches a worn sock over a wooden 'mushroom' or 'egg' to weave across the hole?

Darning rebuilds the fabric with needle and thread alone. A tiger cowrie shell or a hollow dried gourd sometimes stood in for the wooden support inside the sock.

Log Cabin, Drunkard's Path and Bear's Paw are traditional block names in which form of needlework?

Patchwork blocks repeat coloured shapes to build a pattern, and strips of contrasting fabric often form a lattice between them. Tulip is another traditional block name.

Which technique, whose name goes back to a Latin verb meaning 'to attach', sews cut fabric shapes onto a larger piece?

Appliqué began as a way to strengthen worn areas and cover holes before it became decoration. The added pieces usually have their edges folded under before they are stitched down.

According to the old proverb about mending a small tear promptly, 'a stitch in time' saves how many?

Nine is the English figure, from the idea that a tear mended when first noticed never grows into one needing many more stitches. The French version of the saying saves a hundred.

Which American patented a lockstitch sewing machine in 1846, with the needle's eye placed at its point?

Elias Howe won the first US patent for a lockstitch machine, pairing the eye-pointed needle with a shuttle working beneath the cloth and an automatic feed.

Crochet lace-making was taught across which country in the 1840s so families could earn money in a famine?

Ireland took up crochet lace during the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849, when schools were started to teach it. Emigrants later carried the craft with them to the Americas.

Which wartime operation is told across the 34 hand-stitched panels of the Overlord Embroidery?

The D-Day landings of 6 June 1944 and the Battle of Normandy that followed fill 83 metres of hand stitching. Lord Dulverton commissioned the work in 1968, and it hangs in Portsmouth.

Which knotting craft, long used by sailors to cover knife handles, returned in the 1970s as plant hangers?

Macramé is built mainly from reef knots and half hitches. It was most popular in the Victorian era, long before its revival in wall hangings and plant holders.

Which flat embroidery stitch, also called damask stitch, completely covers a section of the background fabric?

Satin is the stitch, and its padded version is worked over rows of small running stitches to raise the shape. Kashmiri embroiderers use a variation that originated in China.

Each panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt measures three feet by six feet, chosen to match the size of what?

A grave is about that size, and for mourners with no memorial service or burial plot the Quilt was often the only place to remember someone. Cleve Jones conceived it in 1985.

Mohair, a yarn prized for its lustre and sheen, comes from the hair of which animal, sheared twice a year?

The Angora goat grows mohair, while the confusingly named angora fibre comes from a rabbit. Both animals are named after Ankara, the Turkish capital once known as Angora.

What do quilters call the soft insulating middle layer of a quilt, between the top and the backing?

Batting, also called wadding, is held in place by the quilting itself: lines of running stitches worked through all three layers.

What do knitters call the small test piece worked before a project to determine their gauge?

A swatch shows how many stitches and rows cover a given area, a figure that shifts with the thickness of the yarn and the chosen stitch pattern.

Which even-weave fabric with a visible grid of holes, sold in counts from 7 to 20, is used for cross-stitch?

Aida, sometimes called Java canvas, has a natural mesh that guides each cross. It is stiff enough to be stitched without an embroidery hoop.

Jane Bostocke's 1598 piece in the V&A is the earliest dated English example of which form of needlework?

A sampler often carries the alphabet, figures and decorative borders, plus its maker's name and the date. The oldest surviving one of all is a Nazca piece from Peru.

Which Japanese embroidery, whose name means 'little stabs', traditionally uses white thread on indigo cloth?

Sashiko began in the Edo period as a way to strengthen homespun clothes, and its look came from cheap white cotton thread and plentiful indigo-dyed cloth.

Which knitting style, named after its home in Shetland, took off when the future Edward VIII wore it?

Fair Isle patterns traditionally draw on about five colours but use only two in any one row. The garments are worked in the round rather than in flat pieces.

Which embroidery technique, named after a labourer's work shirt, gathers fabric so it stretches without elastic?

Smocking developed in England and, unusually for embroidery, was often worn by labourers. Before elastic it shaped cuffs, bodices and necklines where buttons were unwanted.

Hardanger embroidery, traditionally white thread on white linen, is named after a district of which country?

Norway's Hardanger district knew the style simply as hvitsøm, meaning whitework. It decorated the linen of bunads, the traditional national costumes.

Women in Bengal traditionally layer and stitch which worn-out garments into the light blankets called kantha?

Old saris are stacked and held together with rows of kantha stitching to make throws and bedspreads, especially for children. The craft spans Bangladesh and eastern India.

Which Japanese word names the crocheting or knitting of small stuffed creatures, popular in the West since 2003?

Amigurumi has no rules about size or look. The toys are usually crocheted in tight spiral rounds so that the stuffing cannot show through the fabric.

Which member of the Los Angeles Rams' 'Fearsome Foursome' wrote a book titled Needlepoint for Men?

Rosey Grier published the book in 1973, and it shows him stitching alongside examples of his work. Five years earlier he had subdued Robert Kennedy's assassin.

Which lace-making craft knots thread into rings and chains, traditionally with a small boat-shaped shuttle?

Tatting builds durable lace from double stitches worked over a core thread. Germans call it Schiffchenarbeit, 'work of the little boat', while its Italian name means 'chatty'.

Which embroidery, used on shirts and chemises in Tudor England, was commonly called 'Spanish work'?

Blackwork got the nickname from a belief that Catherine of Aragon brought garments decorated with it from Spain. Its double running stitch is also called Holbein stitch.

Which embroidery, defined simply by its use of wool thread, decorated costly Jacobean-style bed hangings?

Crewelwork takes its identity from fine wool thread rather than from any one design. It needs a firm fabric underneath to support the weight of the stitching.

Qiviut, a fibre softer than cashmere and warmer than sheep's wool, is the underwool of which animal?

The muskox is never sheared for it: the underwool is plucked during the moult or gathered from whatever the animals have brushed against.

Which grafting method for closing a knitted sock toe bears the name of Britain's war secretary in 1914?

Kitchener stitch honours Horatio Herbert Kitchener, though knitters were grafting this way long before him. It makes a join that looks like the rest of the knitted fabric.

Which royal residence houses the Royal School of Needlework, which worked on Kate Middleton's wedding dress?

Hampton Court Palace has been the school's home since 1987, in rooms within Christopher Wren's part of the building. It began in 1872 as the School of Art Needlework.

The quilts of Gee's Bend, shown at the Whitney Museum and on US stamps, come from a hamlet in which state?

Alabama's Gee's Bend is an isolated African-American community whose residents descend from people enslaved on a cotton plantation established there in 1816.

Which knitting technique for blocks of colour, used in argyle patterns, shares its name with inlaid woodwork?

Intarsia keeps only one colour active on any stitch, so nothing is carried across the back of the work. Its fields of colour fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Which zigzag 'flame stitch' needlepoint is named after a museum in Florence, where chairs in the pattern were found?

Bargello is called Hungarian point in Italian, a sign that Florentines believed the technique came from Hungary. Its motifs can be curved as well as flame-shaped.

The mola, a panel of layered and cut-away cloth sewn by Guna women, is traditional dress in which country?

Panama's Guna women are thought to have first painted the geometric designs on their bodies, moving them onto cloth after the Spanish arrived. In their language, mola means shirt or clothing.

Which English town made about 90% of the world's needles by the end of the 19th century?

Redditch also turned out fishing tackle, motorcycles and springs. Its Forge Mill Needle Museum shows how needles were once made.

Which German city gave its name to a wool-on-canvas needlework craze sold as hand-coloured charts?

Berlin wool work took off after the first patterns were published in that city early in the 19th century. Aniline dyes, discovered in 1856, later gave it very bright colours.