Cross-stitch – stitches per skein

So I had a question recently on YouTube:

I started to answer and I had a number in my head for how many stitches I thought I would get from a skein, but then I thought more about it. How do I know? I have never looked into it, have never seen any information about it, so how can I be of use giving advice I don’t even know?

So of course the next thing was – I needed to know for myself now.

As many of you may know I have been working on Madeline, and she has a large patch of solid white colour on her chest where the sun beams stream through the window.

So, in order to calculate the answer to the question, I measured 1m of thread and started to stitch.

If you pay attention to picture above – you can see the symbol for u – which is the white I have been talking about. When I finished I started to count, count and then count some more.

I came out with numbers: 404 stitches per 1m, so for a skein (which is 8m), it would be 3232 stitches. However this piece of stitching was unusual because it was a big square of solid colour (usually the stitching requires you to “jump around” a little more), and so I rounded the number down a bit.

So my final conclusion is: 3000 stitches per skein 😀

N.B. This is for 18ct aida (thanks Kate!). If you’re using a smaller count like 14ct, you will get a few fewer crosses.

PS. the end number was bigger and completely off from what I had previously thought, so I was pleasantly surprised.