Okay, I need help...

[AmazingGrlWonder]

I went to a craft store with full ambition to complete a large screen shot of "Zombies Ate My Neighbors" and found this amazingly perfect green plastic fabric that matched the ZAMN white and green swirled background to a T.
I bought what I thought was a fairly sizeable piece to complete the project, grabbed a few colors and went home.

Problem is, I didn't draw out the pattern first. Turns out that the zombies are amazingly complicated creatures and once drawn out they take up a 27 x 47 stitch space! That is HUGE! It takes up a good 1/3 of my fabric. That ruins all my ideas seeing as now I can at best stitch in maybe 3 sprites, and barely get in any background images like the toxic barrels or the walls and hedges that I dreamed of including.

I don't think there is an answer to this other than buying a larger piece of the expensive plastic, but I thought I'd try.

Does anyone know of ANY ideas to try and shrink the size of the sprites? Like, doing half stitches instead of full crosses? Really at this point I'm willing to try anything. I had so much ambition at the start of this! Now I'm just sad.

[tnitnetny]

I don't think there is going to be a way to shrink the original pattern unless you take out a lot of the detail. Work with PCStitch to fit it to exactly what you are looking for (If you don't have it google it and download a free 14 day trial. It is worth it). After you get it to the right size to fit your canvas, see if the detail is enough. If it isn't, you are going to have to buy more fabric.

[johloh]

If a sprite is well drawn it is typically difficult to resize it, and you'll often be unhappy with the results...

It can be done, but there is no simple way...you basically need to redraw it and it will take some artistic skill.