I stitched a lot of other people’s cross stitch patterns last year and was determined that this year I would focus on my own patterns. That was until I stumbled across Ros Clarke Craft’s “A celebration of colour” stitchalong (SAL). I don’t know how I came across Ros’s Instagram where she announced the SAL in November last year, but I immediately knew I needed to do it.

I had no idea what the finished design would be – which is one of the things I both love and hate about SALs – but I immediately loved the fact we could choose our own palette. Using 12 colours from around the colour wheel, plus black, each release took us slowly around the colour wheel focusing on one of the colours.

I opted for a bright colour palette using Anchor threads that I got with a magazine subscription a while ago. I enjoyed choosing the colours following Ros’s advice to ensure they were of the same colour family in terms of tone and brightness.

• Red-purple 088
• Red 047
• Red-orange 335
• Orange 316
• Yellow-orange 303
• Yellow 297
• Yellow-green 777
• Green 245
• Blue-green 525
• Blue 595
• Blue-purple 606
• Purple 449

Accompanying each section was a YouTube video where Ros spoke about colour, colour theory, how artists use colour, how we see colour… Each week I sat down excited to do the stitching but also to learn something new about colour. In the first (I think) release Ros referred to being influenced by Mondrian for the pattern. I therefore had a feeling this finished piece would be right up my street.

Whenever I work on a stitch project I’m excited to see the end result, desperating wanting to get there but when it’s done I’m sad it’s over. When I watch a new TV series where all episodes are available at once, I wonder how we used to cope having to wait a week for the next part. That’s how I felt waiting for each part to be released.

The project was a perfect small piece to work on before work and at lunchtime, and I loved seeing how the sections came together. It was really interesting to see the effect of using colours in different ways, which ones work well next to each other, how thread can be used for different colour effects.

I was going to wait until I’d finished it into something before sharing, but I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. For now it will join the pile of unfinished stitches from the past couple of years. I’m very tempted to do another version in a different colour palette to see how that looks. I also wonder whether it would work with 12 shades of the same colour or from just a section of the colour wheel.

This was a fun pattern to stitch and a fun one to play with. I believe the SAL is still available for free or the full pattern will be released to buy soon.