I stitched like a fiend last week and did indeed finish up the regular cross stitch late Sunday night.

じゃんじゃあああん！She’s done! (ish)

Of course finishing the regular cross stitch doesn’t mean she’s done. And I wouldn’t even let myself sleep after finishing that. I had to immediately start on the backstitch and do some of the vines. I love backstitch. It goes much more quickly than the cross stitch and it’s like instant gratification. It just makes everything pop and look even better.

This is what I ended up stitching Sunday night.

Sorry for the poor lighting. Lamp-lit pictures are’t the best.

Since then I’ve been stitching away. I finished all of the outlining of the vines and flowers and of Mirabelle herself except for a little of her dress on the right that I can’t get to because of the frame. So now I’m left with the designs on the top and bottom. Sound familiar?

Today’s state of completion.

I really love the effect of the silver and black threads, but those designs are challenging and time consuming. There’s no clear linear way to stitch it, so I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity to waste thread going here, there, and everywhere. That’s also going to take me the longest time to complete. I’m about halfway across the top, but the pattern repeats inverted on the bottom.

The top border.

I also have to finish outlining the pattern on the bottom. I started it, and I’m hoping it gets better. It uses a lot of half-stitches and they’re a little hard to follow. Also it doesn’t make the design pop as much as I thought it would, but it might be because it’s not finished.

Here are a few close-ups of some of the finished work. I’m pretty certain I can finish this in the next week. After that I’ve sworn I’m going to take a week or two hiatus before starting another project, but it seems like the second I finish one I start another, so we’ll see. Until then!

Climbing flowers on the left

Mirabelle’s face.