Starting the long journey on my first large cross stitch design

My first post from my phone, I hope this ends up looking ok. So after several hours of playing with and redesigning areas of the pattern for my newest cross stitch piece, I was happy with what the drawing was likely to end up looking like. I realised after I started stitching that I should have compared the thread colours I chose to the printed DMC chart I bought, and not relied on how the colours are coming up in the pattern-making program on my laptop screen. Once I started stitching I realised two of my greys are quite close together in tone, but I’m sure once I get more stitching done the colours will differentiate better.

I’m also experimenting in this piece how I’m doing the stitching and following the pattern. Because it’s so large and has very similar tones across it, I gridded out my fabric (14 count Aida) with a pencil. I usually stitch across the whole piece in one colour, but this time I’m working horizontally in blocks of 10. It seems to be lessening the chances of making mistakes that will come back to haunt me later. I really don’t like parking, but in blocks it seems to be going OK because there are limited colours in each block, at least the bits I’m working on right now.

I was working on the piece for several days where I couldn’t bring my laptop, and I don’t have a printout of my pattern. I decided to take some photos of the upper rows of the pattern on my phone and just work from that. Seems to be working ok, I can keep my phone on the lower bar of my scroll bar frame and look at it while stitching. Speaking of the frame, I bought it from a beautiful shop on View St in Victoria called Button and Needlework Boutique. The staff there were very helpful, as I’d never used a scroll bar frame before. I’d read a good tip to roll the bottom of the fabric up around the lower scroll bar, as then when you rest your hands on the bottom of the frame you’re touching the back of the fabric, not dirtying the front.

I’m looking forward to keeping progressing on this piece, I’m happy with the design and I think it’s going to be a really lovely one. 🙂