Alfred Hitchcock minimalist portrait cross stitch pattern (great beginner project)

Sir Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as one of, if not the most influential filmmaker in cinema history. He is the unquestioned "Master of Suspense" and his films are still watched and studied today. I originally made this pattern based on a prompt from my patrons, "Rear". That made me think of two things: 1: the movie "Rear Window" and 2: a scene in Psycho where Marion (Janet Leigh) keeps looking in her rear view mirror, paranoid that a cop might be following her. The thing those two had in common was Hitchcock, so that's when I decided to make this portrait. Patrons also got this for free at release. If you want to start getting new patterns free as I release them, consider joining!

Not to mention that he has one of the most recognizable mugs in history. I love toying with the capabilities and limitations of the cross stitch medium, and am fascinated by how little objective information our brains actually need in order to make a positive identification of not only a face, but a specific face. With only 4 colors of floss and 690 pixels, we can make an easily recognizable image. 

Sample stitch here is shown on 14ct aida and displayed in a 3" embroidery hoop. Big thank you to Melissa for the lovely finish photos. She was able to remove the outer ring of the hoop by finishing the piece using the String Art hoop finish for which I made a tutorial of the method developed by Craftizilla.

Details:

Formats: ZIP file containing 2 PDFs:

• 1pg color+symbols for digital devices
• 1 pg symbols-only

Size: 28x38 stitches (see images for sizing on different fabric counts)
Stitches used: full X only
Colors: 4 DMC colors
Difficulty: ⚫⚪⚪⚪⚪ Beginner (great first stitch!)

If you need help handling any of the stitches used in this pattern, check out my youtube tutorials.