Boreas

I’m going to do something a little different for this cross stitch project. This is a full coverage copy of the John William Waterhouse painting Boreas. Eagle eyed viewers will recognize this painting as one of my most frequent avatars online (either the full painting or a study version). When I saw that it was available as a cross stitch pattern, I really had to have it.

When I first started cross stitching back in the 90s, half stitches and back stitch accents were all the rage in the most complicated projects. Now, there’s a rage for large, full coverage projects. They’re not as challenging as working in all the other stitch types, but they’re very good for giving yourself something to do while watching tv in the evening for a very long period of time.

I technically started this in 2023, but I wasn’t really set up for a project of this size, and I set it aside for quite a while to perfect my setup. Once I got that done (and because of the great cursed sweater summer of 2024), I was able to breeze through the first two charts. What I decided to do after that is take it a chart a time, and try to do something else (mainly knitting) between charts. It takes about a solid winter month (slightly longer in the summer) to do a chart, so we’ll see how long this actually takes me. I figured I’d set up a page so I can track the yearly progress.

Chart Dates

The charts aren’t numbered – I started in the upper left corner, and am planning to work from left to right, and then down as I go.