The vocabulary every guide assumes you know — drawn where drawing beats words, then defined so you don't have to pretend.
The stitch album
The shapes that make these crafts make sense. Schematic, not to scale — the point is the geometry.
Each pierced card takes four threads. Threading S or Z sets the twist direction; the pattern lives in turning the cards — forward, back, or held still.
A working cord wraps the held cord twice; each pair of hitches = one knot-pixel. Horizontal rows fill, diagonal guides draw lines and diamonds.
One chart row = one row of knots; a filled square means the foreground colour knots across. Numbers count from the bottom, like rows of knitting.
The lace grid is dc + chain. An open cell stays empty; a filled cell gets two double crochets — and the picture appears as shadows on the mesh.
Long straight stitches climb in steps — every column one step higher or lower than its neighbour, and the wave appears with no curves at all.
Punch needle and loop-pile guns leave the loop standing; latch hook and cut-pile tufting slice it open. Same cloth, same charts — different pile.
Block-woven cross-stitch fabric, sold by count (blocks per inch): 11, 14, 16, 18. The holes are the grid.
Friendship-bracelet charts where one row of knots follows a picture grid — the format that spells names and renders sprites.
Pickerup-friendly inkle technique with pattern threads raised or dropped by hand per pick to build letters and figures.
Stepped straight stitches that climb in flame-like waves of color; a needlepoint tradition that also runs as a quilt style.
Pressing the just-woven pick into place with the shuttle's edge or a beater. The beat — not the pull — makes warp-faced bands solid.
Tapestry macramé: picture patterns built from rows of double half hitches, knot as pixel.
Tufting vocabulary: cut pile slices the loop open for plush; loop pile leaves it closed for texture. The guns differ or switch.
The embroidery floss maker whose numbered color chart (454 colors) the whole stitching world speaks. The app's cross-stitch supplies talk DMC natively.
Threading each card two dark, two light and driving the pattern with the turning sequence — the recommended first tablet technique.
Two half hitches in a row around a held cord — one Cavandoli pixel per pair. Horizontal, diagonal; the stroke the knot crafts are drawn with.
Open mesh (dc, ch-1) charted with filled cells (extra dc) to draw pictures — lace-grid pixel art.
Finishing an alpha bracelet with straight edges and hidden tails instead of braided fringe. The "store-bought" look, minus the store.
The loop that holds every other warp thread on an inkle loom to form the two sheds. Same length matters; fuzziness shows in the shed.
The mounting knot that ties cords onto a ring, dowel or foundation row — the way every macramé starts.
Evenweave foundation fabric with paired threads, made for punch needle and tufting (and the classic Swedish weave).
The standing carpet surface — its height is the "pile height", tufting guns set it, shears even it.
Yarn spin directions: S leans up-left, Z up-right. Opposing twists in plying balances the yarn; in tablet weaving the letters are the threading direction.
The opening between warp threads that the weft passes through. Open, pass, change shed, beat: the whole rhythm of band weaving.
The twist-wrapped unit floss is sold in (8 m of 6-strand cotton, in DMC's case). Cross-stitch on 14-count usually works two of its strands.
The length a working thread "spends" being woven or knotted rather than lying flat. The app adds take-up and loom waste to every supplies list.
The pierced square (usually 4 holes) that tablet weaving is named for and built around. Half a playing card is a student tablet; history says so.
The stationary knot (forward-backward or its mirror) that paints a pixel without traveling — the alpha chart's stay-put stroke.
Warp: the lengthwise, tensioned threads that carry band patterns. Weft: the working thread passed through the shed.
Wraps per inch — the honest yarn-thickness gauge. Wrap snug around a pencil for one inch, count, consult the Learn page's table.