Little Quaker Halloween

We could shout our love for Susan Ache (@yardgrl60) and her glorious cross stitch from the roof tops every day! We’ve had so much fun working with her over the past few years. Her passion for the both the craft and for our Aurifloss is contagious and it seems like this age-old practice is starting to gain some new ground.

While the actual practice of cross stitch remains fairly similar to that of years past, the designs have gotten a huge update. We love that Susan builds off of the traditional style samplers, injecting them with new life, using modern layouts and colors.

Our partnership with Susan has spanned two marvelous Aurifloss thread collections — Little Quaker Christmas & Little Band Sampler. She has also generously charted up a handful of fabulous and FREE cross stitch samplers, designed to both introduce the masses to the wonders of Aurifloss and to inspire avid stitchers to expand their own stitch libraries. (check out the full range of patterns available right HERE.)

Little Band Sampler

Today, we’re releasing Susan’s latest FREE pattern. Summer may still be in full swing for many of us, but we can’t help but think ahead to those crisp Autumn days, marking the return of one of our favorite holidays — Halloween!

Little Quaker Halloween is charted at 80 x 100 and uses a range of fab Fall colors. As usual, Susan encourages readers to use her chart as a guide — it will look fabulous in the colors shown, but with 270 available cotton colors, the possibilities are endless!

With that, who better to tell us all about the inspiration behind the stitches than Susan, herself!

Happy Spooktacular, It’s Susan Ache (aka yardgrl60 if you are on Instagram), just checking in with some fun Halloween talk…

Halloween is taken seriously at my house.  For one night my front yard and doorway are transformed into a spooky retreat.  Costumes are mandatory if you want to participate in my family night. And of course, let’s not forget the spooky music coming through speakers placed all around the yard. The neighbors wait every year to see what we have added or changed and we wait to see how many more people we can scare.

Traditional colors for Halloween have always been my favorite and I love them the best for one day a year.  Give me all of the blacks, greys and oranges to complete the holiday feeling. Add some spider webs, bats and witch hats and we can call me happy.  If you love a one color stitching project, and don’t want to commit to a solid true black then try color number 2630. To me, it’s like working with the color of a sharpened pencil, it doesn’t have that bold black feeling, but still feels like a crisp color.

Well, of course for one day a year I love to have all of the Halloween quilts and stitching front and center in my home decor and each year I try to add a couple of more fun additions.  So, what better time to stitch a Quaker sampler than at Halloween, but all in a cute spooky version.

That’s why I designed Little Quaker Halloween. It’s just a little taste of Halloween in my very favorite stitching style, which is the Quaker sampler.  I hope that you enjoy adding some spooky stitching to your life with plenty of time before your trick or treaters come knocking on your door.  Make sure you grab the best treats before you sit down to stitch your very own version of Halloween.

Until next time…

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SUSAN’s FREE PATTERNS
Click here for access to download all PDFs.

Little Quaker Halloween

Little Band Sampler

Little Irish Blessing

Sweet Land of Liberty

My Valentine

LITTLE BAND SAMPLER SERIES

Little Band Sampler, Part 1

Little Band Sampler, Part 2

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SUSAN’S THREAD COLLECTIONS
Little Band Sampler
100% Aurifil Cotton, 10 Small Spools, Aurifloss (18yds/spool)
Colors included:
2530 – 2335 – 1148 – 2865 – 2535
2225 – 5015 – 4182 – 2606 – 6738

Little Quaker Christmas
100% Aurifil Cotton, 10 Small Spools, Aurifloss (18yds/spool)
Colors included:
1231 – 2886 – 1147 – 5016 – 2140
2420 – 5002 – 2255 – 2270 – 2250

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ABOUT SUSAN
Instagram — Susan’s Book
A love of color, makes it is easy for Susan to grab  inspiration from her native Florida surroundings. With no idea other than knowing she wanted embroidery and nine patches in her first quilt, a new world opened up to this mom of now five grown children.  Self taught and many hours of reading about the makings of a quilt and quilt blocks has made this an a lifelong passion. Susan is always searching for new and fun ways to show off as many colors as she can in a quilt.  Most of her quilts are a creative impulse from trips to the garden center, a photograph, or browsing through paint chip selections. “I really never see just the quilt, I seem to see the quilt in the room that it belongs in”.  Working in a quilt store for years helped to pursue that passion of color and the fabric inspired life she enjoys while she constantly striving to make her next favorite quilt.