I Want to Believe Poster Cross Stitch

It is done! I finished the X-Files cross stitch late Saturday night, and washed/dried/ironed it on Sunday. Then I backed it and added hanging loops on Monday and waited for a sunny(ish) day to photograph it. Bask in its glory:

Posing proudly with the completed piece

This is the first piece I’ve bothered to sign and date, but as the biggest piece I’ve ever done, I want posterity to remember who stitched this and how long it took!

And some more detailed shots:

This is possibly my favorite part of the piece. I love the shading from one color to the next and the way it is framed by the black.

The UFO is pretty great, too.

It now has a proud place next to the front door.

It really ties the room together

To compare, here is a still from the show that shows the poster in Mulder’s office:

Image source: Know Your Meme

And here are the stats on this piece’s construction:

• Fabric: 18 count white aida
• Pattern source: Self-made (now available on Dropbox)
• Number of colors: 13 (DMC floss)
• Finished size: 270 stitches tall and 234 stitches wide (15 by 13 inches)
  • 63,180 total stitches
• Start & end dates: July 18, 2014 — May 9, 2015
  • Time to complete: 296 days (estimated 215 hours, but probably more than that)
• Finishing: Piece is backed with a piece of grey Kona cotton stiffened with iron-in interfacing. I added tabs for hanging by sewing folded-over ribbon into the top seam.
• Television watched while working: Approximately all of it
  • But seriously, just off the top of my head, I watched a season of Borgen; all of Weeds and Stargate Universe; a good chunk of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis; several seasons of Buffy; all of Firefly and Dollhouse; both seasons of The Fall; several episodes of Farscape; The Thick of It; True Detective (though I worked on March’s flower of the month for most of that); Better Call Saul; some VEEP; some Last Week Tonight and Colbert Report; Black Mirror; the first season of Hatufim; The Inbetweeners; Black Books; several episodes of Friday Night Dinner… and that’s not even considering the many hours of working set to music, radio, and the eerie silence of my own thoughts
• Birthday parties attended with this project in tow: at least 5 (but interestingly, not my own, even though I did have my birthday while working on this)

Now the question is: what to do next? I’ve already started some other projects, but they all seem to take no time at all compared to this one.

Updated to add: If you would like to stitch this yourself, click here for the link to download the pattern (free).

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