#natisstitching

[vole-mon-amour]

Finished on January 9, 2025. It has more depth irl, I can't really capture it with the camera. The progress is a lot of posts in my #natisstitching tag.

upd:

Here's another pic. The colours are a bit dull on this one but oh well.

upd2: it's not exactly cross stitch, to be honest. It's tapestry (goblen, petit point, whatever name you like for it). It's stitched with 2 strands of thread over one strand of fabric (instead of the regular 2 strands to make an X), that's why the stitches are so small. It usually doesn't have any kind of backstitch and is better to look from afar because it's like a watercolor painting of sorts. When you look really close, you only see stitches. When you look a bit further away, you can see the entire picture.

It really is a beautiful picture.

[vole-mon-amour]

Look at this fat fluffy birdie!

Details are under the cut.

March 12. I'm sick, so just a bit of stitching. It's 3 strands of acrylic wool and the stitches do NOT look to my standard. :/ Well, I bought this kit to try to stitch with wool, so now I know I dislike it. Might as well try to re-stitch it with the regular embroidery floss and see how it looks.

BTW, I switched the fabric from Aida 14 to Lugana 27. A different color, too, so I don't have to do the French knots.

March 15. Forgot to take a Pic without any backstitch.

Finished it in 2 days (March 12,March 15). My first Riolis kit and probably my last, at least with "wool" thread. It's unraveling, it tangles, it's uncomfortable to work with, and I didn't like the pattern itself.

It's cute but it's also very meh. (UPD March 16: It's actually quite nice as a finished and hooped result, I just didn't like the process at all.) I wanted to try the wool thread and I did. Not a fan. 3 strands of regular embroidery floss is bad enough but wool? And the way it looks on fabric? Nope.

Oh, and I also did white stitches in 2 strands instead of 1 (and somewhere in 3 strands) because all I could see was the fabric under those stitches. I saw some people switching the fabric to 30-32 count Murano and those people are correct. I have no idea why the kit has Aida 14. Stuff like this works way better on evenweave.

[vole-mon-amour]

Pattern is: Self-Isolating Bat by Night Spirit Studio. It's free on their website. (lots of other nice free patterns, too).

P.S.: Switched DMC 02 to a fully white thread (a mix between b5200 and Blanc). Still looks nice.

Progress and more details are under the cut:

Feb 14, 2026. Needed something to occupy my brain and hands to push anxiety down.

Feb 15, 2026. Genuinely surprised I managed to connect that red oval. Stitchinh on this fabric is pretty difficult and I manage to make mistake even on Aida, let alone on evenweave (and it's a hand dyed black fabric, count 32 on top of that).

Feb 16.

I now can't sit for a long time, it's killing my back. Oh well.

Feb 18. Tried to cross stitch in a semi lying down position. Back still hurts, but I refuse to give this hobby up. Also, the bat is very cute. I should have made little fangs for it, but since those 2 x's are a part of a long thread, I'm keeping it this way.

Feb 21. Honestly, it's possible to finish this thing in two to three days, but since I have other things to do and can't sit for a long time, it's being stitches at a slow pace. No regrets. Better like that than nothing.

And I basically had these 3 colors lying around, it's cotton and I don't have any other cotton. And I had this piece of fabric I would have probably thrown away, so this was fully free (aside from my time and back pain).

February 22, 2026. Finished this baby! First project since September 2025. The crosses are nowhere near perfect, but I'm still happy with it. Now need to think how to frame it.

[vole-mon-amour]

once you get into fiber crafts, there's no going back. I don't have any needles for knitting or crocheting that would fit this yarn, so I'm knitting with my fingers. I want to make some coasters out of this cord. I made one a while back, but it's way too small. and since the yearn is just sitting in my drawer, might as well something useful with it.

gotta say, for a first attempt with this technique, it looks way better than it did with another technique with knitting on fingers.

upd: finished thing

[vole-mon-amour]

April 9. It doesn't look like much but it literally took me several hours. I stopped stitching when I literally started falling asleep, it was around 10:40 pm.

April 10. Tumblr says 22 hours ago. 😁💪 // April 11.

April 12. I usually listen to audiobooks, but today everything pissed me off (or made me want to cry), so I listened to The Dark Side of The Moon and cross stitched for around an hour and a half. It's 10:32 pm at the moment of writing this & it's time to lie under my blanket and relax.

April 13. Stitched until felt sick of it. Kind of way too monotonous for me. The colours are too green and gray, and I want to colour it like a brush, but there's no easy and fast way to stitch all that green sky. 😮‍💨

April 16. Contemplating whether I should continue this because it looks VERY green. This finished project looks so much more vibrant, although redder, but I think it looks better? I'm not really sure what to do with this. 🤔😮‍💨

Does anyone have any thoughts? If you stitched this, was that the case for you as well?

April 18. Since the options were: abandon this thing or stitch the pattern as is, I'm doing the latter and hoping the final result will work together. Since I'm really bad at switching colours, especially in a such complex pattern, I'm gonna have to embrace the green hue. Or not. We'll see.

April 20. I am SO eepy and basically falling asleep with my eyes half closed. Would prefer more stitching but progress is progress.

April 24. Because it's so monotonous, I have to switch places where I stitch. Also, I'm sleepy and my eyes hurt, so I took the easy road.

April 25. I think I'm running out of thread of this colour. 🥲

April 26.

May 8th. Not thrilled about this or cross stitch rn. The colours are so green and get, and muted, and boring. :(

May 10. I just gotta endure. It's exhausting. I think I'm gonna start a second project to relax from this one.

[vole-mon-amour]

a decent enough coaster 😌 gray yarn used = good!

I want a sewing machine sooo badly. handsewing sucks big time.

prev post

and look at my previous one. I call that an improvement for sure.

[vole-mon-amour]

pdf for the actual pattern / credit: 1. / 2. / 3.

i actually have NO idea where it's from aside from that, i just made the patterns readable for myself. hopefully there are no mistakes in the second and third ones, being unable to turn the canvas was really difficult to make it symmetrical.

if anyone knows the actual sources, please let me know. thanks!

p.s.: i'm definitely not a fan of making patterns, lol. made it to try out some variegated thread.

[vole-mon-amour]

listen. no wonder I haven't found anyone doing something like this, ESPECIALLY by hand. my hands hurt, it takes too much time, it's ugly.

maybe I'd be able to pull off the thing with the fabric with a sewing machine, but it's basically impossible by hand and it is NOT worth it. don't repeat my mistakes, lmao.

having a creative mind is kind of a curse.

upd:

tumblr is losing it 😂🙄