A few weeks back, my nephew came to visit my house and was enthralled by all the cross stitch works I had sitting around in my "craft room" (spare bedroom).

Since I'm always looking for new projects to do, I offered to make him something of his choice, with the caveat that it be something I mutually agreed on. I mean, let's face it - I didn't want to put 40+ hours of work into something Star Wars or Pokemon related, only to have him outgrow the brand in a year or two and throw the work out.

After a little back and forth on possible design ideas, I suggested my nephew consider a Halloween piece, since it could be something he uses as a seasonal decoration as he grows up and moves away into his own place. He agreed. So, we ended up reviewing lots of different pattern options, and then he settled on this:

Universal Monster Stitch A Long (SAL) Cross Stitch Pattern

Mystery, Horror, Gothic, Halloween, Frankenstein, Mummy, Wolfman, Phantom

On June 26th, I purchased the above pattern on Etsy and began. Since the pattern is a "stitch along" (SAL) concept, I've actually really enjoyed the experience. For example, the mummy room is supposed to look like this:

But thanks to the SAL group, I was inspired to swap out the chandelier for tomb appropriate torches instead:

As you can tell, I took some liberties with the design (that's cross stitcher code for: I miss counted the placement of the blue sapphires and red tiara jewels of the sarcophagus, but just left it rather than ripping out and redoing). I've also opted to utilize metallic threads in the design, so you can see there's gold threads in the sarcophagus and vase, and red jewel toned threads in the sarcophagus/vase/ceiling trim/kitty eyes.

Here's another view of the same room, before I finished the sarcophagus. Maybe the metallics show a little better in this shot:

Obviously that room is still in process, so there's no mummy yet, and the floor trim is still only half stitched.

On a side note, I'm trying to use bits of metallic threads throughout the house to make it look balanced. Most recently, I just finished putting DMC light effects E3747 into the windows to make it sheen like glass. The photos don't do it justice, as it turned out pretty cool.

And yes, I well realize the white ghosts don't show up well on my background fabric. I am in the process of addressing that as you read this post, so don't fret ... it will be fixed later.

Anyway, since I joined the SAL late, I'm pretty far behind and have really been cranking on the design. Below is a progression of where I'm at.

If I were to guess, I'm somewhere around 50 hours in on the piece at this point - for reference, the photo second from the bottom where I added the "water" to the room on the right ... just that water bit took me about an hour. Thumb in photo for scale reference.

Yes, this is definitely the largest and most detailed work I've invested in over the course of my stitching "career". I will be sure to update again as I progress. For now, here's the start. Enjoy!