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I think that you will work even faster on this now as you will want to show your mum the progress you are making. The balloon colours will help you to keep going too as they will help to stop the boredom of doing only the blue.

Looking great.

Rosemary

Very good progress, and no wonder your mom got all emotional, it is really a beautiful project.

Jesse, I won't sit down, thank you, I'd rather stand facing you. Very close, too.

Great progress, and I'm glad your Mum knows now because it means she can enjoy looking forward to it and seeing how it grows!

It's a lovely project
Room for a medium sized bum?

Great progress Peng, I can see the balloon forming! And I bet you've made your mum so happy and glad to have someone so caring enough to stitch her a present like that

And I reckon we need a round table and to put the creme egg in the middle to share cause my big hips will take up some room... lol

It's a terrific project! - and yes, doing a balloon will be so motivating!

Something I find surprising: you started from the bottom. I've always started at the centre, as the kits recommend you to. So... why the bottom first? Do you usually work that way? Is it better to stitch from the bottom (or top, if it comes to that)?

I usually start in the center. This is my first time starting somewhere else. The center spot on this pattern is right in the middle of a balloon and I think there are at least 30 colors just within that first 10x10 grid. I thought it would too confusing if I started there. I measured things out (but not successfully as you'll notice on the right side) and decided to start somewhere "less busy". I could have started at the top but I start my stitches in the lower left corner and it just made more sense to start stitching at the bottom.

I'm done a little bit more and there's another balloon basket on the right side that I'm stitching around a bit. I kind of like seeing a balloon starting to form because it finally feels like this is starting to look like something.

What a great project~ great progress!

I am so tired of blue. At least I've got another color to work with for awhile.

It's coming along nicely. Well done!

It looks great! I believe the blues are tiring, but they are so beautiful!

I agree with Agi, the blues may be getting on your nerves now but they are very very effective!

The blues are going to be the perfect backdrop, they're sooo pretty.
I can understand it getting tiring for you, but now you can enjoy all the beautiful colours to come!

Oh there's nothing worse than lines and lines of the same colour! You have my sympathy.

But you're doing so well, I'm dying to see the next update, it's looking great.

You're making great progress there - nice to see a balloon popping up now.

Your Mum's reaction was very touching - I bet she'll be delighted with the finished picture!

Wonderful!!!

My mom is working on a little 5x7 inches kit she picked out from my stash. It's a bunch of roses tied with a ribbon. I was over there last night and asked to see her progress. She said she had to unpick about 1/3 of it because she accidentally reversed two colors on the chart. When she did that she realized that she wasn't going to have enough thread to finish it so she had to find matching colors at the store. She told me she just wanted to throw the whole thing away but she couldn't because "it's very addicting to just sit and stitch". I think I've got her hooked now.

I'm having a little crisis with how I'm stitching things. I started out focusing on one row of squares and following it all the way across. That worked for about two rows and then I started to get to areas with just one or two stitches of that color in the square above me. Then I started to follow colors. Things started to get really confusing then. I have some pages that cuts off in the middle of a square so sometimes I get confused flipping pages back and forth to follow a color. I'm debating whether to start doing it by pages so I wouldn't have to flip so much. I might even want to do it by lines and that would require the parking method and I would need to get a lot more needles in order to do that. I guess I just need to figure out what I'm going to do.

Beautiful Design...Looks very big also! xx

Good for you getting your mother well and truly hooked

And good luck in finding the right stitching method for you!

Maybe you could try one of those pako needle organizers? I just ordered one because I had heard good things on here about it. With as many colors you have to deal with, maybe it would do the trick? Hope you can get it figured out!