Cricut Project: Samhain: Honoring Salem's Victims

Last year, I planned to create a "Hallowe'en" shirt that harkened back to the celebration's origins: the Celtic New Year and the thinning of the veil between the worlds. In other words, Samhain.

Living in the United States, it's hard to think of "witches" without thinking of the unjust and oppressive "trials" and executions of those Salem, Massachusetts residents accused of being witches. I decided I wanted a ragged, almost "bloody" Pentacle to symbolize that oppression and loss, words to honor acknowledge those who were accused, and an "honor roll" of those who became, depending on your view, either victims of public hysteria or martyrs for Pagans in the Americas.

My timing was off, and my design not completed until well after Samhain.



At September's Pirate-themed Geocaching MEGA event, I had a conversation with a board game vendor whose wares included AFFLICTION: Salem 1692, a board game centering around those very events. Our discussion inspired me to create the T-shirt I envisioned last year.

I used a slightly larger shirt than usual because the amount of text requires this shirt to be worn untucked. The large amount of text and the wide settings needed to make the text legible at a distance required me to piece those areas section by section, cutting them out with 24" mats.

I used almost two complete (36") rolls of Siser HTV in the (discontinued) color "Peach Fuzz", plus 12" of "Bright Red". Had I used Cricut brand HTV, the shorter roll length (19"-24", depending on color and style) would have probably required three or four rolls of the light color.

Not by any means an inexpensive project, but one I needed to do to honor those who were persecuted largely because they did not conform to their society's norms.