Horror Movie Cross Stitch Patterns

After sharing some cute Halloween patterns the other day, let’s go in the other direction with some cross stitch patterns inspired by horror movies.

You can stitch up an actually still kind of cute Ghostface from Scream with this pattern from Red Splatter Designs. It looks like it uses about five colors, and has a stitch area of 4.07 by 6.57 inches, or 10.3 by 16.7 cm. It would be perfect in an 8-inch hoop.

This mini Freddy Kruger from Night Sky Studio Dee is another fun one, and looks great on black fabric. He fits in a 4 to 6 inch hoop and would be great to hang in your TV room.

The Shining is about as scary as I can take, so I wanted to add in this Shining sampler from By Meg C. It includes all the highlights, from creepy twins to weird carpet, Danny’s tricycle and Jack’s typewriter. It’s 200 by 200 stitches and when you stitch it on 18 count fabric it fits in a 12-inch hoop.

If you can’t narrow down which horror movie is your favorite, you might want to stitch one of these projects instead. It’s horror movie time includes eight classic horror movie characters (don’t ask me to name them, I’m missing a couple) and is sold by Vikycialp. It only uses two colors and is 245 by 309 stitches. On 14 count fabric that comes out to 17.5 by 22 inches, or 44.4 by 56 cm.

The Friend horror cross stitch pattern from Leila Stitch is incredibly detailed and would be awesome for a horror lover with a dedicated movie room. It uses 18 colors (I really thought it would be more!) and measures 200 by 120 stitches. That’s 14.29 by 8.57 inches, or 36.3 by 21.77 cm, if you use 14 count fabric.

And if you like a little cute with your horror, I’m a horroraholic features mini versions of all your favorite slashers. (The pattern page doesn’t show it stitched on fabric but you get the idea from the photo.) This one is from Shimmering Pine Studio and comes out to about 21.5 by 17.5 inches, or 54.6 by 44.5 cm, on 14 count fabric.

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Shamrock Cross Stitch Patterns

I love the look of variegated cross stitch floss and how it makes it possible to stitch with a variety of colors without changing thread, giving your project more depth and a more complex look without you having to do anything different.

Or at least not much different. I recently came across this blog post from The Copper Fox all about how to use variegated floss and it noted that many people would say it’s a good idea to complete a whole stitch (when you’re stitching whole cross stitches) with the floss before going on to the next stitch. Most of us stitch row by row, but of course if you do that with variegated yarn, it could change color along the way and you’ll end up with stitches that are half one color and half another color or a different shade.

Of course that makes total sense but I’d never thought about it.

The post includes swatches with different kinds of variegated threads to show the different between working stitch by stitch or row by row, and it doesn’t make a huge different over the small area shown but I can see how it might make a difference if you had really long rows or if you just want to make sure your stitches are a single color whenever possible.

In addition to this experiment, the post talks about other ways to work with multicolored floss, including deliberately mixing the colors among the strands of floss you are stitching with and stitching in a different order instead of right to left and top to bottom (or whatever direction you typically work) to get different effects from the thread.

It’s fun to geek out on this stuff because it can make a difference if you want to play with it, or you can just stitch on without giving it much thought, and both will give you good results.

Check out all the experiments at The Copper Fox.

Do you do anything different when you stitch with variegated floss? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: The Copper Fox]

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