Free toadstool cross stitch pattern: Toadstool at Night
Quick answer: Toadstool at Night is a free autumn cross stitch pattern with a toadstool, a moth and climbing vines. Open the pattern in Heddle to see the chart and thread list, and track your stitches as you go.
A toadstool, a moth and a lot of vines
I made this pattern to capture a little bit of the whimsy and cosiness I feel in autumn (or fall, if you’re reading from the US). I used the toadstool motif from the autumn collection as a base, then added a night time scene with a moth landing on it and vines growing all around.
Pattern details
- Size: 60 × 60 stitches
- Fabric: 14 count, which finishes at 4.3 × 4.3 inches (10.9 × 10.9 cm)
- Stitches: 3,616 cross stitches and 20 backstitch lines
- Threads: 11 DMC colours, listed below
- Difficulty: a great second or third cross stitch project, or one for an ambitious beginner
| DMC | Name | Stitches |
|---|---|---|
| 310 | Black | 1,985 |
| 801 | Coffee Brown Dark | 521 |
| 3347 | Yellow Green Medium | 280 |
| 3830 | Terra Cotta | 262 |
| 3865 | Winter White | 130 |
| 3064 | Desert Sand | 112 |
| 895 | Hunter Green Very Dark | 103 |
| 738 | Tan Very Light | 101 |
| 444 | Lemon Dark | 20 |
| 434 | Brown Light | 53 |
| 402 | Mahogany Very Light | 49 |
You can open the pattern, check the thread list and track your stitches there. Prefer paper? Open the pattern, go to Options, then “Export, floss list & copy” to download the PDF.
Stitching notes
I love the look of a stitched background, so I decided to stitch the black background to get the night time sky. If you’d like to make it a faster project, buy black Aida fabric and skip the background stitches!
Planning your project
Here’s what you’ll need to buy, worked out with Heddle’s free tools. These are estimates, so treat them as a good guide.
- Fabric: the design is 60 × 60 stitches, which finishes at 4.3 × 4.3 inches on 14 count. With a 3 inch (7.5 cm) margin on each side for framing, cut a piece about 10.3 × 10.3 inches (26.1 × 26.1 cm). The fabric size calculator will work it out for a different count or margin.
- Thread: with two strands for the cross stitch, 10% waste and standard skeins, you’ll need about 12 skeins: 2 of black (310) and 1 of each of the other ten colours. The floss estimator lets you change those assumptions to match how you stitch.
- Black Aida: if you skip the background, you’ll need a lot less of the black thread. It makes up 1,985 of the 3,616 stitches.
Tracking your stitches
You can tick off each stitch as you work it on your phone or tablet, with no felt pen needed.
More autumn cross stitch patterns
If you’d like more for the season, the autumn collection has leaves, conkers, acorns, apples, blackberries and a pumpkin, and I wrote about the memories behind it in my autumn collection post. All the other autumn motifs are free too.
Let me know how you get on! I love seeing completed projects. You can get in touch here.