The Largest Cross-Stitch Ever Made: “The Battle of Grunwald"

If you love epic needlework, meet the queen of them all: a life-size, hand-stitched recreation of Jan Matejko’s 1878 painting The Battle of Grunwald. Charted by Polish designer Grzegorz Żochowski and stitched by a team of volunteer embroiderers, this project stands as the largest hand-made cross-stitch on record—an astonishing fusion of art history, community, and sheer stamina. 

How big is the “biggest”?

The finished embroidery measures about 30.2 × 13.3 feet. To bring the scene to life, stitchers used around 150 kilometers of thread in approximately 220 colors, laying down roughly 7.9 million stitches. The chart itself filled 50 volumes totaling 3,270 pages—a project before the project! Work on the stitching ran from December 2008 to August 2010. Which to me is mind blowing. One of those sections would have taken me years!

(above all the separate pieces, below the stitchers admiring their accomplishment)

Who made it and how?

The effort was organized in Poland (notably around Działoszyn/Pajęczno), led by Janina and Adam Panek. The teams tackled large 3 ft by 3 ft sections to keep the logistics manageable, that were later assembled into the full scene. Contemporary Polish coverage counted dozens of stitchers at work; at one point, 32 embroiderers were reported as actively stitching to finish before the anniversary commemorations of the battle. 

(one of the stitchers)

Why this painting?

Matejko’s Battle of Grunwald is a national icon in Poland, depicting the 1410 victory of Polish-Lithuanian forces over the Teutonic Order. The victory became a powerful symbol of national pride and unity for Poland and Lithuania, shaping their national narratives for centuries.  In 2010 was the 600 year anniversary of this event.

Translating such a dynamic, armor-glinting, banner-whipping scene into cross stitch is a technical feet in itself. It demands fine color transitions, massive pattern management, and near-military coordination—qualities that Žochowski’s chart and the stitching teams delivered at heroic scale. (If you’ve ever blended two floss shades for a smoother gradient, imagine doing it across thousands of square inches!)

Where has it been displayed?

Since completion, the embroidery has toured exhibits in Poland. Coverage from 2014 and 2020 highlights showings in Białystok and Pajęczno, where visitors could stand just feet from this monumental textile—close enough to see the tiny Xs that build lances, horses, and swirling standards. 

Geeky stitch stats (for the floss-curious)

Dimensions (stitches): 4,304 × 1,835 = 7,897,840 crosses
Chart set: 50 books, 3,270 pages
Palette: about 220 colors
Thread length: ~150 km
Active stitching time: 1 year 9 months (after more than a year of charting)
These figures alone tell the story, this wasn’t just a hobby piece, it was a coordinated, large-scale craft production that still honored the hand-made soul of cross-stitch. 

More large scale adventures

The largest Cross Stitch by a single person is a replica of Da Vinci's "Last Supper" it measures about 76 inches high by 53 inches wide. Peter Volna from the Slovak Republic stitched this piece over ten years working on it 3 hours a day. The stitch-count is 1276 by 871. He used almost 30 miles of thread.

Then there is the largest published cross stitch, which is by Joanna Lopianowski-Roberts from the United States. It is the replica of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. It has taken Joanna 8 years (2872+ working hours) to create & stitch this 628,296 stitch masterpiece. It measures 40 by 80 inches. She stitched about 1 hour a day.

This was well before the time were there was image to cross stitch software conversion and she had to draw to convert each section to manually cross stitch. I think you can still buy the pattern for around $100.00.

And lastly, the largest/longest Embroidery was stitched for Vicar of Holy Trinity, Cuckfield, the Revd Michael Maine. It contains 1600 feet of tapestry illustrating the Narnia Chronicles, embroidered for him as a boy by an extraordinary Cornishwoman, Margaret Pollard, who died in 1996 at the age of 93.

What it means for stitchers today

Projects like The Battle of Grunwald expand our sense of what’s possible with needle and thread. They remind us that cross-stitch can be intimate, a single motif in a hoop or breathtakingly architectural, spanning rooms and years. They also underscore the power of community stitching: many hands, many colors, one shared vision. For anyone charting historical art, it’s a masterclass in scale, organization, and color discipline.