HALLOWEEN SILHOUETTES by Shannon Christine Designs

PRICE: $12 or free from magazine

CHARTS: link

MY IMAGES: link

MY GRADE: A++

MY THOUGHTS: I absolutely love this. I got the charts for free online and they came out of a magazine. They've been renamed Halloween Silhouettes from Spooky Silhouettes. There are four different designs, each being a 3 3/4" square (55x55 stitches.) I made a quad design out of this. I left one blank row between them. I wasn't sure if two blank rows would look alright so I just left one row between them. This uses full cross stitches and the owl uses a few 3/4 stitches on his face and chest. After completing the first one, the witch, I thought it would look much better with one more row around the border to widen it, so I did that and boy does it look much better. Each square then became about 3 7/8". The finished quad is 7 7/8" square. 

Every square is very busy, as you can see, and the border on each one is different. I think the pumpkin should have been left off the witch design but I stitched it anyway for fear of later regret.

MATERIALS USED: I used 14 count "sand" colored Aida, 15"x18", by Charles Craft (DMC), from their Carolina Linen line. The color is identical to their light oatmeal from their Fiddler's Cloth line. I used a total of 24 petite glass Mill Hill black beads though the chart didn't call for any. I used all but a 16.5" long piece of DMC 310 black floss from a third skein, so you'll need three 8.7 yard skeins of whichever color you choose. 

I used a 9" black square frame with real glass and easel back. The window of the frame is just over 8.5" so that gives the framed design about a 1/4" border. I had it in a 10" frame but the border was too wide to suit me so I found the hard-to-find 9" square frame at A----n. Those aren't easy to come by so if you need one and find it, buy two or more for future use.

CHANGES I MADE: As stated above I added another row of border, making the stitch count 57x57. I left off all the single ply black French knots. In place of where some should be, and there were to be a lot, I used petite black Mill Hill glass beads. They're very cute even though you can't see them very well. On all four points, north, south, east, west, on all four designs there's this design, which looks like a cross to me. I didn't like that so I left two stitches of each and every one.

You can see more of my own photos here. On Pinterest I found a photo of a pillow someone made.