Cross Stitch - I have never used a ME cross stitch design. I would appreciate your help. Will it make a design look more "hand worked", if I use aida cloth or regular fabric? I know some of you ladies have probably, already, experimented with this. Anyone want to share their thoughts? TIA

I stitched gold-work designs on even weave tone-on-tone quilting cloth for mugrugs last Christmas. I made sure the weave was exact in the hoop and the resulting stitching looked quite beautiful and as if done by an experienced hand-embroiderer. So far I haven't done any large pictures in cross-stitch, but as Mops and Sue state, the important factor would always be to get the fabric lined up exactly square on or in the hoop. I think I'll stick to the normal fabric rather than try to stitch on an aida cloth. ME cross-stitch has a character all its own - I like it on normal fabric and not so much on aida cloth.
AlmaG.

I tried out a couple of designs on aida cloth (see link) and stitched a lot on evenweave material vaying from linen, pieces of woolen pants to curtains and they all look nice. Problem with aida cloth is you have to have the exact size cross stitch for it. Fortunately you can enlarge cross stitch designs easily without getting strange results. Then you have to make sure the design is placed correctly, e.i. the stitches have to be in the wholes in the aida fabric. And last but not least you have to hoop straight as can be. ut if you can do that the result matches hand made perfectly.

I have only done cross stitch ME on kitchen towels with a fine weave, they are very easy to do and stitch very well. Different threads, like cotton, could possibly give a more hand stitched look...

I have just started with CS. Here is the post with my issues. Sue is one of the people that hopefully will see your post.

My favourite topic! I think you should use a fabric with a clearly visible even weave, taking care to get it straight in the hoop. That will make the finished product look hand done. It is very difficult indeed to hoop Aida fabric so that the blocks coincide with the stitches and, even if you are successful the finished product will only look as someone has stitched it who can't be bothered to count the threads! (That is me nowadays, I use Aida for my hand stitching. When my eyesight was sharper I used evenweave linens in the way they have been used for hundreds of years before Aida was thought of.)
My opinion - for what it is worth!