Project Recap [Acadia National Park]

After a fairly boring winter, I finished my larger cross stitch project of Acadia National Park. If you search for Acadia National Park, one of the images that will likely show up is the overphotographed Bass Harbor Head Light, which is what this pattern is of. More specifically, it’s the Bass Harbor lighthouse at sunset during the summer. Assuming it’s sunset and not sunrise, it has to be summer because 1) there’s no snow and 2) that’s the time of year that the sun sets behind the lighthouse like that.

The designer is Awesome Pattern Studios. With Etsy providing an easy platform for people to sell everything from “live, laugh, love” signs for your kitchen to felted likenesses of your cat made from its own fur, there’s been a huge rise in cross stitch pattern designers. On one hand, this has been a great thing, because you can now stitch a large variety of things, not just flowers, teddy bears, and Bible verses. On the other hand, there are some major problems with trademark/copyright infringement¹, up to and including straight up stealing patterns. Less illegal are pattern mills that churn out large numbers of patterns² that may be of low quality or can be, to put it generously, highly inspired by other designers³. Some people refuse to buy anything from these kinds of shops, others avoid them when possible, and some people don’t know and/or don’t care.

So Awesome Pattern Studios is at least pattern mill adjacent, but it does seem that the patterns were actually made by them (any other similar Acadia patterns I found were also from potential pattern mills). One of the problems with pattern mills is that because of the large volume of patterns, they may just be photos run through a pattern maker and/or haven’t been test stitched, which can lead to problems with the colors appearing different than expected based on computer mockups, random single stitches of colors, or chart symbols that are hard to differentiate (ex. 1 and l). At least for the Acadia pattern, I did not find this to be the case.

It was a full coverage pattern, but was pretty easy to stitch because the colors were in well-defined blocks with hardly any stitches scattered around (also known as “confetti”). There were some questionable single stitches but few enough that it could have been a design choice. Maybe. The pattern had eighteen colors, most of which needed less than 1 skein of floss, with the exceptions of the sky purple, one of the other purples, and one of the peaches. If the pattern’s stitch count was accurate, I managed to get over 6500 stitches out of three skeins of the sky purple. Online calculators seem to say you can get ~1800 stitches out of a skein on 14 count Aida, but I guess the blocks of color and my refusal to carry the thread more than the mathematical minimum distance earned me some extra stitches, which should have saved me about 17 cents.

The finished size is 150 stitches wide and 200 stitches high, or 10.7” by 14.3” on 14 count Aida. I started at the end of January and finished at the end of April (1/30-4/26), so it took 86 days to do 30,000 stitches for an average of about 350 stitches a day. I can usually get a little under 150 stitches done in an hour, but that can drop to ~100 stitches/hour if there’s a lot of counting or color changes or rise to almost 200 stitches/hour if it’s a straightforward section.

Since the project took multiple months, I blanket stitched the outside of the Aida to keep it from fraying, which worked well. I did not grid the fabric, except for running a single thread along the outside of the bottom and right-hand sides to make sure I was going to end up where I was expecting. Because of my current setup, I ended up stitching most of the sky upside down which wasn’t too confusing as long as I stitched in vertical lines. Due to not having convenient access to a printer, I copied the symbol key onto a piece of paper that I kept visible while stitching and referred to the chart on my computer using a version with symbols in the color of the thread. Being able to zoom in was nice, and the colors help to keep you from accidentally stitching the sun in green.

Overall, it was an enjoyable pattern to stitch. Until I can get it framed/need the binder clips and hanger, it’s hanging from the back of my door binder-clipped to a hanger. I’m not sure yet what my next project will be; I have a few ideas but I’m still planning things out to maximize the amount of stitching I can do while minimizing the number of colors of floss I need to buy. Because it’s a scientifically proven fact that even if you have a whole box of floss, the colors you need for your next project will be all the ones you don’t have.

¹I’m not going to get into it here, but fan art can be a very grey area in terms of what’s fair use, what’s parody, what’s okay if you’re not profiting monetarily, etc.

²These differ from collectives that sell work from many different artists/designers with permission, which can be common in eastern European countries.

³For example, see Satsuma Street’s (the original designer) pretty little city series and compare them to the cities made by Awesome Pattern Studio. “How close is too close?” is something else artists have to deal with, like you can’t complain if someone else draws a picture of a house, but would it be considered copying if you both draw a red house with a black roof and three windows?