The Mini Project Has Evolved - HAED QS Clara Progress

Many of you know that recently my enthusiasm for my current cross stitch projects was waned. In order to coax it back to life I worked on a few mini projects, which helped tremendously. In fact it was so successful I decided to move onto QS Clara.

Now I know that at over 50,000 stitches I can not claim that this piece is in any way 'mini', but compared to some of Heaven and Earth Designs new super sized charts Clara is positively tiny. When I began this chart I decided to stitch the black outline first and then fill in the colour. This has been the trick to how I have managed to work on this while staying in a mini mentality.

Each section of colour filled in feels like little finish, which builds on the piece as a whole. So when I sit down to work on this, instead of feeling overwhelmed with how much is left, I just concentrate on the little piece currently being stitched. It has worked really well and I am having a lot of fun with it.

HAED QS Clara - Hannah Lynn Disney

Anyone who has stitched a Hannah Lynn pattern knows that the hair is almost pure confetti, which makes it very time consuming. Working each section individually has made it much more manageable. I am still working on my Somebunny to love mini at lunch time and for those situations where Clara would be too unwieldy.

This piece is also a great example of a parking method I use, which I call parking by feature. It may have another name but I have never come across it. This is a technique I use to avoid lines appearing between columns and I find it also breaks down the chart into more manageable chunks.

Have no idea what I mean by parking? Check out my tutorial for the column method: Parking Tutorial

I will be posting a tutorial on my park by feature method in the near future, however if you have any questions or suggestions please leave a comment below.