Hi, I'm Gloria Kenyon, Public Programs
Coordinator for the Smithsonian American
Art Museum and Renwick Gallery. Today we
are going to be making crafts our May 17th
Handi-hour. That Handi-hour is a
collaboration with our friends at the
National Museum of American History.
We are celebrating the centennial of the
entry of the United States into World
War One. We will be doing crafts that are
part of the handiwork that women did to
support the Allied soldiers. Today
I'm going to show you how to do some
counted cross stitch based on these
embroideries. This is called 'Airplanes
Over Paris' and they're just different
versions of airplanes that were
used by the Allied forces. Then you
can see this is Paris and the Eiffel Tower.
I'll be showing you a basic
Eiffel Tower stitch. They also did some
things, so these are different Allied
soldiers. You can see different French
soldiers, actually. I've translated
that one and done a version of that.
You can see here. Then I've also done
some of the airplanes and the Eiffel
Tower. I'll be showing you how to do
the Eiffel Tower. This is the pattern
that I've translated for the Eiffel Tower.
To start doing our Eiffel Tower I'm
going to take some cross stitch fabric,
this just has small, it's woven with
little holes in it so you can easily get
your needle through. You can use a
hoop if you want to hold it taught, but
because this is so small and this is
some pretty stiff fabric I'm not going
to do that today. I've got my
embroidery floss here. Embroidery
floss comes in six strands and you'll
want to separate it out into three
strands so that you can more easily
thread your needle and pull it through
the fabric. I've actually got a piece
that's already separated into three.
I'll just go ahead and thread my needle
with that. This is a cross stick needle,
it has a really large eye so you can easily
fit the embroidery floss through that.
I'm just going to thread my needle.
Alright so you'll just pull your thread
through and I'm going to leave a little
bit of a tail. You can hold your thread
in by looping your
stitches around it once you pull it
slightly through the fabric, but I'm
actually going to tie a knot in it,
because I find that to be a little bit
easier to do. I'm going to start at
the top of a hole and pull my thread
through and come down opposite the
opposite corner from that hole.
Pull that taught. You're going to get
half of the cross for the cross stitch.
I'm going to come through the second
hole just above where I pulled my
thread through and do the same thing.
I've got two little crosses right next
to one another. Now I'm going to come
back up to the top of the hole above
just where I came through, pull my
thread through, and come back down
over creating an X. That is the cross
in the counted cross stitch. Two
stitches here, so I've got one, two. That's
matching my pattern here. These are
the two, same two that I've done.
If you've done your counter cross stitch correct
you'll just have straight
lines on the back. If you can see on
the back of this one, there's just
straight lines all the way through.
When you're doing your stitches
correctly, you'll see that it's nice and
clean on the back and it comes out nice
and neat on the front. I'll show
you a couple more stitches for the
Eiffel Tower and then I'll show you this
final stitch to finish it off, which is
the back stitch. I'm just going to
keep going, continuing in the same way
that I did. You can see I've got some
nice clean stitches on the back here and
I'm actually going to trim my thread.
I'll show you how to finish this off.
To complete our Eiffel Tower we're
just missing this top little stitch that
completes the tower. That's a back
stitch as opposed to a cross stitch. I'm
just going to show you it quick, it's
really easy. All you do is come through
the top of your fabric. You're going
to go just one square above where you
finish your last cross stitch and then
come back down right at the top of that
cross stitch. The back stitch you
always come from behind and come over
your previous stitches and meet them
again. We've just done one quick
stitch and that has finished our Eiffel
Tower. Now, it is complete.