I love giant crass stitch, taking simple patterns and blowing them up to a larger scale.  At Christmas I did one for a friend and I just loved how it turned out.  So yesterday I decided to do one for my daughter’s room. 

The first step is to paint the canvas.  I just used the cheap craft store canvases because I’m not going to frame it out, instead I just paint the sides.

The second step is to figure out a way to transfer the chart on the back. I did this by drawing a grid and adding the pattern.

I’ve also done it by simply enlarging the pattern and taping it to the back of the canvas. With the latter you are stitching through both canvas and paper but it really isn’t a problem and is the easier method (you have to remember to reverse the image).

I love the final result, although I wish I could have enlarged the stitches a bit more. This is a matter of figuring out how many stitches in the pattern and how they translate to the size of your canvas.  With the football player the stitches are almost an inch square whereas the seahorse stitches are just half an inch. And next time I’ll use six-strand embroidery cotton rather than perle coton. 

note:  The football player came from Iotacons by Andy Rash, a great source for small pixel images.  The seahorse image is from Makoto’s Cross-stitch Super Collection.