The Arraiolos Stitch

Learn more about the Arraiolos stitch, used to create rugs in Portugal. Current PieceWork subscribers can instantly download the stitch pattern below to make a sample rug coaster.

What Is the Arraiolos Stitch?

Catherine Overbay in the September/October 1999 issue of PieceWork writes:

The Arraiolos stitch is a variant of the familiar cross-stitch practiced for centuries throughout the world. It is also called oblique cross-stitch, Slavic braid, double cross-stitch, and devil’s point, and is commonly used in Sweden, Greece, and Slavic countries. The rugs and the stitch received the name Arraiolos in the mid-1600s, though how and why they became so strongly identified with this town remains something of a mystery. Historians agree that the stitch, technique, and many traditional patterns were brought to Iberia (present-day Portugal and Spain) nearly 1,000 years earlier, and so, like that of many other cultural and artistic traditions in Portugal, the story begins with the Moors.