What is a stitch-along

 For people that do cross stitch there is a term that we use to explain a project that people are going to be working on at the same time and it is called a stitch-along, or as some people call it a start-along. When people are talking about doing one of these, they may refer to it as a SAL.

There are so many different stitch-along and it just depends on what you want to do. 

Mystery stitch-along 

There is mystery stitch-along where you will receive a piece of the pattern at a specific time, and you can work on that section and then have to wait until the next section is released. This can be a lot of fun, but you have to be willing to work on a project and not know what the final piece is going to look like until the final section of the pattern is released. This can be a lot of fun, but you have to be willing to not know what the piece will look like and sometimes these projects will be a 12-month project.

Specific pattern stitch-along

This one is an easy one to understand because you are given a specific pattern to work on and it can be divided into sections, but you know the pattern before you ever start the stitch along. There are designers that will do this, and they will give you the entire pattern all at once and the pattern is divided into sections so you can either stitch it following the sections or you can stitch it your own way it doesn’t matter.

Specific designer stitch-along

This one is you can pick any pattern from a specific designer, and everyone starts their pattern at a specific time, and it is just a way to motivate each other to get work completed on the design. This can be a lot of fun when people are posting which pattern they are working on as well as where they started the piece.

The idea behind a stitch-along is to help motivate you to work on a piece and try and get it done within a specific time people. The reason why some people call it a start-along is because in some cases if you have a lot of projects on the go you will start the stitch-along but you end up working on a bunch of other projects and the stitch-along piece doesn’t get finished in a timely manner.

For me it is interesting to figure out which stitch-alongs that I want to participate in. I have done most of the different stitch-alongs that I have listed, and it has been fun. I have done both the stitch-along and the start-along because things just got in the way of me finishing a project when it was the stitch along. I recently finished a 2019 Mystery Stitch-Along so what started as a stitch-along turned into a start-along but I at least got it finished. 

A stitch-along can be a lot of fun if you don’t put too much pressure on yourself. If you can’t keep up with the project that is fine because cross stitching is supposed to be for enjoyment so why stress about keeping up with something.