Cristianos / ChristianThe Virgin Mary with her head bowed to one side and her eyes lowered, the veil falling over her shoulders, her hair gathered in a braid and a faint halo around her. It is worked like a pencil drawing: all 25 of its threads are greys, from off-white to near-black, and not a single patch of fabric is left unstitched. It is 165 x 229 stitches, about 30 by 42 centimetres on 14-count.
It is a piece for patience: the tones blend almost stitch by stitch, and one stitch in ten has no neighbour of its own colour at all. And since it is free, you can lighten it: among its 25 greys there are pairs that are practically identical on the chart — DMC 168 and 415 differ by a single unit, 645 and 317 by three — so merging each pair into one thread saves skeins without changing the picture.
The Virgin Mary
This pattern is free: open it, change it however you like and publish your version in the gallery, under your name.
Files open with the Puntotek app.
The numbers
Size by fabric count
| Count | Stitches/cm | The design | In inches | Fabric to buy * |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 ct | 4.3 | 38.1 x 52.9 cm | 15.0 x 20.8 in | 54 x 69 cm |
| 14 ct | 5.5 | 29.9 x 41.5 cm | 11.8 x 16.4 in | 46 x 58 cm |
| 16 ct | 6.3 | 26.2 x 36.4 cm | 10.3 x 14.3 in | 42 x 52 cm |
| 18 ct | 7.1 | 23.3 x 32.3 cm | 9.2 x 12.7 in | 39 x 48 cm |
| 20 ct | 7.9 | 21.0 x 29.1 cm | 8.3 x 11.5 in | 37 x 45 cm |
| 22 ct | 8.7 | 19.1 x 26.4 cm | 7.5 x 10.4 in | 35 x 42 cm |
* The fabric to buy allows 8 cm on each side for the hoop and the frame. The highlighted row is 14-count, the most common: the pattern has the same number of stitches on every fabric, what changes is how big each one is.
Suggested fabric: white.
The threads
| Thread | Stitches | Of the total | Skeins * |
|---|---|---|---|
| DMC 24 | 5,680 | 15.0 % | 4 |
| DMC 02 | 5,236 | 13.9 % | 4 |
| DMC 01 | 4,199 | 11.1 % | 3 |
| DMC 3865 | 3,778 | 10.0 % | 3 |
| DMC 762 | 3,497 | 9.3 % | 3 |
| DMC 3072 | 1,690 | 4.5 % | 1 |
| DMC 03 | 1,602 | 4.2 % | 1 |
| DMC 168 | 1,077 | 2.9 % | 1 |
| DMC 04 | 1,031 | 2.7 % | 1 |
| DMC 927 | 899 | 2.4 % | 1 |
| DMC 646 | 809 | 2.1 % | 1 |
| DMC 318 | 806 | 2.1 % | 1 |
| DMC 648 | 780 | 2.1 % | 1 |
| DMC 3799 | 703 | 1.9 % | 1 |
| DMC 3756 | 677 | 1.8 % | 1 |
| DMC 169 | 655 | 1.7 % | 1 |
| DMC 413 | 638 | 1.7 % | 1 |
| DMC 844 | 637 | 1.7 % | 1 |
| DMC 414 | 597 | 1.6 % | 1 |
| DMC 645 | 539 | 1.4 % | 1 |
| DMC 647 | 489 | 1.3 % | 1 |
| DMC 934 | 486 | 1.3 % | 1 |
| DMC 415 | 481 | 1.3 % | 1 |
| DMC 317 | 409 | 1.1 % | 1 |
| DMC 535 | 390 | 1.0 % | 1 |
| 25 threads | 37,785 | 100 % | 37 skeins |
* The skeins are a guide: they assume about 1,700 stitches per skein with two strands on 14-count, rounded up. Finer thread goes further, doubled thread goes less far.
What this one asks of you
All 37,785 stitches are full cross stitch: no half stitches and no backstitch to follow.
It has 5,685 lone stitches, 15.0 % of the total, and 3,594 of those have no neighbour of their color at all. The more there are, the more the needle jumps.
