How about some Halloween Cross Stitch?

I’ve just finished this Halloween themed cross stitch- super chuffed with it. I’m supposed to be making prints, and I will – but this turns out to be way more portable than ink and die cutting machines. It’s all about portability at the moment for me as I get back into school run mode. I have 4 runs a day, representing about 4 hours of my time, split up throughout the day. Factor in cleaning the house and making dinner and I’m not finding chunks of hours together. I like to work in chunks, I love having a bunch of hours spread out in front of me with no cut off – typically I love to work at night and I get more and more productive as people fade off to bed and the house falls into quietness.

It’s not like I don’t have crochet on the go also, but I do find myself casting around for things I can make with a view to selling, and I’m beginning to think that maybe I can design cross stitch patterns. I hadn’t really ever gotten fully ‘into’ cross stitch – I had one sole 30 year old project – still on the stretcher frame with only about 250 stitches out of maybe 6000 actually complete – but this last two weeks or so I dabbled a bit at it and I’ve been loving the results.

I am drawn to primitive country styles – one of my very first stamp sets designs was this one – from September 2009, there I was knee deep in saltbox houses and willow trees. It’s timeless – the country primitive vibe – and it’ seems ‘s calling me again now that Autumn is on the way!

I think I will try this one out on Etsy, see if it tickles anyone. I’m in the process of updating the Etsy store anyhow, maybe I’ll pop a few patterns in there, see what happens!

I stitched this one on 14 count Aida, and I might stick to that, I think anything smaller would be tricky for my eyes, I might look into some linen even weave at the same scale though. I’ve used DMC threads for this, finding those rather nice to work with also. Might look into a magnifying glass also..