Seventeen years ago Marie Wade turned her longtime hobby of cross stitching into a career after she began selling materials for the hobby on eBay. Since then ABC Stitch has opened a storefront, relocated from New Hampshire to Texas and developed two websites where customers can order supplies.

Through its original website, www.abcstitch.com, the company sells materials for cross stitching such as fibers and charts. The hobby involves sewing a design onto fabric with X-shaped stitches. When the company relocated to Spring in 2012, Wade created the website www.stitchtherapyneedlepoint.com to sell supplies for other methods of needlepoint stitching, said co-owner Jordan Wade, Marie’s son.

The company has built its customer base over the years and now sells and ships items to customers in countries throughout the world, Jordan Wade said. Most of the company’s business is conducted online, but the storefront on Champion Forest Drive gets a solid amount of foot traffic, he said.

The company does not sell completed stitching projects, but it sells the materials necessary to complete projects at any skill level, from kits for children to tools to create detailed and intricate designs, ABC Stitch office manager Darienne Falcon said.

Cross stitching has continuously evolved over the centuries it has existed and continues to remain popular, Falcon said.

“There are designs that were stitched hundreds of years ago that still get reproduced now,” Falcon said. “People can stitch the same pattern that people were stitching back in the 1800s, so it’s kind of a nice link through history.”

Falcon said there are numerous reasons why people are attracted to cross and needlepoint stitching. Part of the appeal is that both crafts can be social activities where one person teaches another person, while at the same time they can also be very solitary and therapeutic experiences.

“It’s nice to be able to sit down with your stitching at the end of the day and have something to focus on and have a pretty end product to hang on your wall,” Falcon said.

ABC Stitch
16712 Champion Forest Drive, Spring
281-205-7507
www.abcstitch.com
Hours: Mon.-Fri. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., closed Sun.