Cross-stitch is the oldest form of embroidery and can be found all over the world since the middle ages. The cross-stitch sampler so called because it was generally stitched by a young girl to learn how to stitch and to record alphabet have been around for centuries. The earliest known cross stitch sampler made in the United States is currently housed at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts, it was created by Loara Standish, daughter of Captain Myles Standish and pioneer of the Leviathan stitch, circa 1653. Traditionally, cross-stitch was used to embellish items like household linens, tablecloths, dishcloths, and doilies (only a small portion of which would actually be embroidered, such as a border). Although there are many cross-stitchers who still employ it in this fashion, it is now increasingly popular to work the pattern on pieces of fabric and hang them on the wall for decoration. Cross-stitch is also often used to make greeting cards, pillowtops, or as inserts for box tops, coasters and trivets. Multicoloured, shaded, painting-like patterns as we know them today are a fairly modern development, deriving from similar shaded patterns of Berlin wool work of the mid-nineteenth century. Today it is becomming popular to convert a photographs or a fine art images into a chart suitable for stitching. This requires specialist software which can be difficult to use without experience. As a result, Mithra Designs put together this website so that you can obtain a cross-stitch pattern from any of your images in a simple straightforward manner. A sample of this is shown on the right. This was created from a photograph of a cat and stitched by Helen Wallis.