SCK Tries… Mushroom Family Cross Stitch Sampler

It’s another edition of SCK Tries where we try out a DIY to see how it works in real life and whether we’d recommend you give it a go. This time it’s a Mushroom Family cross stitch pattern.

The Original DIY

I featured this Mushroom Family Sampler pattern on SCK back in 2020 and thought about it often so finally decided to give it a go. It’s a free pattern by Kyoko Maruoka aka Gera! for Lecien and has dual Japanese and English instructions.

Tools & Materials

This pattern is designed to be stitched on coloured linen with Lecien’s Cosmo brand thread. Since I’ve started selling printed cross stitch aida, I used some of my pastel watercolour Aurora print to make things easier. There are 24 thread colours, which would have cost a lot to buy, but I was able to find matches for most colours in my thread box and doubled some up when they were very similar. It was so confusing I ended up making a little swatch guide in my sketchbook, which was actually really helpful.

Process

Most of my cross stitch projects have been small or with large areas of the same colour. I’ve never stitched something so big or with so many little details in different colours. I enjoyed that aspect a lot and it was easy to keep track of what I was stitching without having to mark things off on the pattern.

The characters tended to use the same colours for faces and details too so I usually left those unstitched until I had a few I could do together. Adding the faces really made it come alive, especially the backstitch glasses!

The End Result

I’m so pleased with how it turned out! It has so much personality and looks way more impressive than the actual effort it took. I did make a few mistakes with the counting between mushrooms but since the green leafy motifs feel so random you’d never notice.

I finished it a lot faster than I expected, especially once I started using my photography light to help me see everything better in the evening. I enjoyed the whole experience so would definitely recommend this pattern. It might be a little too challenging for a complete beginner but there’s nothing too tricky. I’m really quite sad it’s all over and would happily stitch this again so I’m sure I’ll try another of her patterns soon.

More Gera! cross stitch patterns are available to download at Creative Poppy or her new Happy Days Cross Stitch book (UK/ROW) is out in January. You can also follow @kyokomaruoka on Instagram.