My Favorite Miniature from the 'Winter's Here' Series: A Cut Above the Rest

Hello!

I'm really enjoying Alice's 'Winter's Here' series. It took me about 5 evenings to work on this project, and while there were some issues along the way, I'm happy with the result and the process itself was pretty enjoyable.

WHERE I BOUGHT IT AND THE PRICE

I picked up the entire set of miniatures on Ozon. If you buy the set now, it's 1750 rubles. Buying them individually would cost more, around 400 rubles per piece. The series is popular, and these sets are available in many online and offline stores.

THE SET CONTENT

The standard set comes with materials and tools from Gamma.

The set comes with a manual that shows the main stitches. If you're new to this, you can refer to it if needed.

The pattern is printed on the back cover, it's glossy, colorful, and symbolic. I started cross-stitching with Alice's sets, and I love their patterns. In this one, the back cover covered some of the symbols, but it was still understandable with a closer look. There's also a question about the pattern's back - it's printed in different thicknesses, even if the color doesn't change, which led to me making a mistake during the process. The key is printed here too, at the bottom.I've got 19 different shades of cotton mull, and they're all sorted out on my organizer. But I'm not a fan of the way the threads are hanging - for bigger projects, I always rework them, but in this case, I could've just left it. Another thing I like about Alice is the varying lengths of the threads. Some colors need longer threads, while others need shorter ones. I had enough threads for the whole project, although one of them did get tangled up after I finished stitching. I had to rip it out and start again. I had a problem with one thread - it kept knotting up in the first thread, but not in the second.

The Aida canvas has 14 counts, and the edges do tend to fray a bit as I work on it. But after washing, there's no shrinkage - it stays at 7cm per side, just like it was before.

I've got two needles - a blunt one for the cross-stitch and a sharp one for the backstitch. The backstitch is a real game-changer in this design - there are so many areas where I need to bring the needle in and out of the center of the stitch, and even with the sharp needle, it was a bit tricky.

TECHNIQUES

I've been using the full cross, half cross, and blend stitches - and I've been doing them in both one and two threads. One time, I accidentally did the whole light blue half cross in two threads instead of one, and I was tempted to leave it, but I ended up ripping it out and redoing it. It's a good thing I didn't just leave it - the difference is noticeable in the finished project.

The design has a lot of complexity, with threads ranging from 1 to 3 strands. I made another mistake here. Because the left and right tree branches were printed in different thicknesses, I initially stitched the right side in two strands, although the pattern only specified one. As a result, I ended up ripping it. But by that point, I'd already stitched the dog in double strands too, as it seemed thick to me - and that's the one I left as is, without redoing it.

There's no sense of volume here, like the horses seem to have, but overall, the varying complexity and abundance of half-crosses did their job.

OVERALL IMPRESSION

When I started working on this, I was confident I'd wrap it up in no time. But in the end, I still took almost a week to finish. I stitched by colors: from 1 shade to 19. I usually do it this way on miniatures. There were some small gaps in the process, which I filled in at the end to avoid distractions.

The background really transformed thanks to the tree.

This is before (there was an unidentified object in the sky over St. Petersburg - the sun came out):

And this is after:

I took a break from this big project to recharge, and I've been staring at it for hours, eager to finish it quickly. Lately, I've been making a lot of mistakes, like the time I grabbed the wrong thread for my embroidery hoop and ended up sewing a bunch of X's. I was about to lose my mind, so I decided to take a break and work on this little mini instead. And, as it turns out, I made a bunch of mistakes here too, just because I wasn't paying attention. But, overall, the process of stitching was more enjoyable than stressful.

I used the self-threading needles from Nurge, but I highly recommend the almost rectangular ones from the same manufacturer, which I used initially. They're on the other photos. I just put the next mini from the series on these ones for the photo, without waiting for good daylight...

In short, I highly recommend this set! It has a great storyline, a clear pattern, and nice colors. As soon as I finished, I decided to start the last one, the fifth, to say goodbye to this series and move on.

So far, I've stitched four sets from the series of five:

Zamelo (with a house)

Loshадки

V lesu (with a river)

And "Doroga domoy" with a dog - the set this review is about