Yes… you read that right… FO. Finished. Object.

I finished up the last stitches over the weekend, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Here’s the details.

I started this project after getting inspiration from a few of you who were working on Quaker style samplers. I loved the look of them, done in all one colour so I went looking. When this turned up in my Google search, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. Was it Quaker? Not quite… but it was a sampler, it was monochrome (mostly – there is some orange), and it spoke to my witchy heart.

Though the pattern calls for 14 ct aida, I did it on 18 ct – I just prefer the smaller stitches.

I put the first stitch down at the beginning of August. I thought I’d probably be able to finish it up by Hallowe’en. Clearly, that was not to be. But I never once got bored with it – even though it was mostly one colour. Stitching the witches was a little sloggy, but not too bad.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have any problems stitching with the black floss If my fabric was darker, it might have been an issue, but this natural beige provided plenty of contrast. I think I went through about six skeins of floss, but I didn’t actually keep count.

There are a few mistakes in there… but nothing you can notice without sitting down and counting stitches.

Now some of you might be uber observant, and notice something a little different from the actual pattern:

Yep. I left out a WHOLE section. While I liked the haunted house… those silly looking ghosts just weren’t doing it for me. Short of redesigning that whole section – which I could have done but wasn’t up to – I couldn’t see a way around them. Other than leaving the whole thing out. I did have to add a couple rows to make sure checkerboard border still worked out. I was able to add them easily to the sky above the witches – so again, not noticeable unless your counting!

I think it works quite well without it! Now… it just needs a frame!