u/Andolie_Kitten

Pattern: https://totoostitch.com/products/cinderella-mandala-cross-stitch-pdf

Been a busy week with my boss retiring and finally getting to celebrate the better half's birthday. The over 1 stitching is coming along nicely. It doesn't look like I've made much progress in terms of size, but I've gotten in about 2k stitches.

This is my first time working with silks. They are so nice to use. They pull so smoothly and lay much nicer naturally than cotton, but probably not something to use all the time given the price difference. I'm getting used to the petite braid metallic as well, but the blending filament used to backstitch the birbs gives me fits. I strip away the 2 tiny bits and just use the single wide strand since I'm not actually blending it.

If the weather holds this weekend & my husband feels up to it, we'll be putting in a flower bed which means less stitching time again. One of the few times in rooting for some rain.

I had Friday off for the better half's birthday, but he's still quite under the weather, so I got extra stitchy time. I plan to do the pigeons and roses, then start beading the central motif before moving onto the carriages. This weekend will be busy, so I probably won't make as much progress.

This week's lessons: Don't trust PK's imports on this pattern. The .pdf that's meant to be uploaded doesn't match watch PK actually imported. I don't fault the designer nor the software. This pattern has loads of specialty stitching, beads, and fractionals which PK doesn't handle well if at all. I was going to have to use the pdf for those things anyway. Petite stitching makes progress feel so slow. I've got about 800 stitches in that rose on the upper right.

Cinderella Mandala by Totoostitch.com

Edit: Grammer

Since this is such a large undertaking for me with tons and tons of new things, I figured I'd document the process in its own posts vs. just adding to the Sunday WIPs post

This pattern is Cinderella Mandala by Totoo Stitch. I'm a complete sucker for all the old fairy tales, and while Sleeping Beauty is my favorite, this pattern is just too gorgeous to not do.

Tonight, I stitched just the very center medallion. Tons of firsts. First time with linen on a scroll frame. First time using petite braid and silk lame. First time doing crescent stitches. I've already got some magnifying lenses on order, so don't zoom in too much because they aren't the neatest stitches ever. I might end up redoing them. 😬

Backstitching never fails to amaze me. 3rd one I've finished that needs a frame now. Saving up my money to get the very nice ones folks have recommended. This one went a bit faster since my husband spent the last 10 days in the hospital. We're home now and he's recovering, but there's not much to do there except to sit and wait on tests to be done and wait more for the results and try not to worry. This was an excellent distraction.