Cross Stitch Pako Dolls House.
This was ,by far, my most intricate project to date (excluding Tinkerbell which was my own personal gift to my daughter and can be seen here as an earlier project).
This came as a home made kit containing photo copied patterns and DMC yarns and all colour codes had been customised to the threads available, some of which needed improvisation to complement the overall look of the design. This also required the purchase of extra coloured skeins at cost.
The photo copied patterns were of a poor quality as they appeared to have been stored for quite some time and therefore required a lot of research to ensure that everything was correctly placed and all the correct colours and back stitching were in the right places.
Some of the cross stitch had been started using a single thread of yarn which I have shown below.
The first thing I needed to do was to check the cross stitch for alignment with the pattern and once I was sure that everything was correctly placed I could then start to complete the outline of the building and create each separate room within the design, starting with the top left attic room and then carefully working my way across and down the building, first doing all the cross stitch and then the back stitch so as to make sure each room was complete before I moved onto the next to ensure minimal contact with the stitching already completed. You can see my progress in the images below.
With the top floor attic rooms now completed I moved on to the second floor nursery and bed room. The staircase had already been started and all that was left for me to do was add the dark brown cross stitch and back stitch details.
Following on from the nursery and bedroom I then did the first floor master bedroom, landing and bath room.
My next task was to tackle the ground floor study/parlour room, kitchen and front door.
To do this I first tackled the stonework detailing and hand rails followed by the kitchen, front doors, study/parlour and then the steps. Lastly I added the garden details.
Due to the intricate nature of the project and because I had to cross reference the pattern I had with the information I'd found on the internet, I made sure I completed every detail in each room before I moved on to the next section. This included all cross stitching, half stitching and back stitch.
I would not recommend this kit for beginners due to the size of the item. With a good quality pattern to follow each room is fairly simple but the eye for detail and level of concentration required is not for the faint-hearted. If you would like to try the kit yourself you may be able to purchase it by clicking on the image below.
