Needlework
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50 free Needlework trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Needlework covers far more than sewing on a button. It takes in knitting, crochet, embroidery, cross-stitch, needlepoint and quilting, and each craft comes with its own tools, its own history and its own slang. If you have ever wondered what a stitcher means by a UFO, you are in the right place. This quiz has 50 questions with answers and short explanations. They cover basic stitches and fabrics, the names of everyday tools, famous stitched works in museums, traditions from Japan, India and Scandinavia, and the surprising people who have picked up a needle, from royalty to professional athletes. It is written for anyone who makes things with thread, and for quiz hosts who need a craft round for a guild night or a stitching group. Beginners will find plenty they can answer, and lifelong crafters will still meet a few questions that make them stop and think.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In needlework, what does UFO refer to when a project has sat untouched far longer than any WIP?
Unfinished object
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.
Q 02Which famous hanging, nearly 70 metres long and showing the Norman conquest, is really an embroidery?
Bayeux Tapestry
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.
Q 03Which sewing tool was dropped as a Monopoly token in 2017, then voted back by the public in 2022?
Thimble
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.
Q 04Which knitted garment is named after the British earl who led the Charge of the Light Brigade?
Cardigan
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.
Q 05The classic pincushion, often with a small emery-filled strawberry attached, is shaped like which fruit?
Tomato
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.
Q 06In Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, which villain's knitting secretly records the names of the condemned?
Madame Defarge
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.
Q 07Which British Olympic diving champion was filmed knitting in the stands at the Tokyo and Paris Games?
Tom Daley
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.
Q 08What do knitters call ripping out rows of stitches, slang inspired by the sound of 'rip it, rip it'?
Frogging
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.
Q 09Which royal prisoner stitched the Oxburgh Hangings with Bess of Hardwick while held captive in England?
Mary, Queen of Scots
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.
Q 10The oldest known knitted artifacts, dating from the 11th century, are socks found in which country?
Egypt
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.
Q 11Which basic knitting stitch is a knit stitch seen from the back, alternating with knit rows in stockinette?
Purl
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.
Q 12Knitting every row when working flat makes which simplest of hand-knitted fabrics, one that barely curls?
Garter stitch
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.
Q 13Crochet takes its name from the French word for which small tool, a term used in 17th-century lace-making?
Hook
Q 21Which American patented a lockstitch sewing machine in 1846, with the needle's eye placed at its point?
Elias Howe
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.
Q 22Crochet lace-making was taught across which country in the 1840s so families could earn money in a famine?
Ireland
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.
Q 23Which wartime operation is told across the 34 hand-stitched panels of the Overlord Embroidery?
The D-Day landings
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.
Q 14Which crochet motif, worked in rounds from the centre outward, became a 1970s fashion craze?
Granny square
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.
Q 15Which street art, traced to Houston shop owner Magda Sayeg in 2005, covers public places in knitting?
Yarn bombing
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.
Q 16Which scissors with saw-toothed blades cut a zigzag edge that limits how far woven cloth can fray?
Pinking shears
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.
Q 17Which mending technique stretches a worn sock over a wooden 'mushroom' or 'egg' to weave across the hole?
Darning
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.
Q 18Log Cabin, Drunkard's Path and Bear's Paw are traditional block names in which form of needlework?
Patchwork
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.
Q 19Which technique, whose name goes back to a Latin verb meaning 'to attach', sews cut fabric shapes onto a larger piece?
Appliqué
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.
Q 20According to the old proverb about mending a small tear promptly, 'a stitch in time' saves how many?
Nine
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.
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.
Q 24Which knotting craft, long used by sailors to cover knife handles, returned in the 1970s as plant hangers?
Macramé
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.
Q 25Which flat embroidery stitch, also called damask stitch, completely covers a section of the background fabric?
Satin
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.
Q 26Each panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt measures three feet by six feet, chosen to match the size of what?
A grave
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.
Q 27Mohair, a yarn prized for its lustre and sheen, comes from the hair of which animal, sheared twice a year?
Angora goat
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.
Q 28What do quilters call the soft insulating middle layer of a quilt, between the top and the backing?
Batting
Batting, also called wadding, is held in place by the quilting itself: lines of running stitches worked through all three layers.
Q 29What do knitters call the small test piece worked before a project to determine their gauge?
Swatch
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.
Q 30Which even-weave fabric with a visible grid of holes, sold in counts from 7 to 20, is used for cross-stitch?
Aida
Aida, sometimes called Java canvas, has a natural mesh that guides each cross. It is stiff enough to be stitched without an embroidery hoop.