Blackwork Checkerboard Sampler

A few years back while browsing through a stack of Gram's old needlework books I came upon an interesting idea.  They had turned a simple blackwork sampler into a checkerboard.  I found this quite ingenious, because really, what the heck do you do with a sampler once it's done? So I snapped a photo of it and moved on to other things.  I came across the photo recently and thought "wow...still a neat idea". 

The thing with photos is that while you get the general idea of how the needlework should look, it's reeeeeally hard to distinguish the actual pattern.  So I browsed through some books I had at hand, surfed the web, and even made up a few of my own to create this blackwork checkerboard. 

Time for some specs:  The pattern is 216x216 squares on 18ct Aida cloth (60.96x60.96cm).  The checkerboard consists of 64 squares, each of which is 26x26 squares.  If you're doing the math, that leaves a 4 square boarder around your project. Feel free to leave more.  32 of those squares are left black, leaving 32 to be filled in.  Blackwork is usually worked in black...hence the name.  I, however, rebel that I am, will be using DMC 3362 (it's a nice dark green color). I'm also going to be working it with 1 strand.

I"m going to post parts of the pattern about every other day in the hopes that it will motivate me to keep up the pace.  Haven't decided if I'll work in order, but I'll post them in order in the event anyone else wants to use this pattern so you're not too confused or skipping wildly around.  Personal use only please. 

So yay! Here we go :-)

A preview of what the end result should look like

Broken into 16 parts

Chart A (click to enlarge)