About
My mom taught me how to cross-stitch when I was little, but it only became a real hobby around my late high school years. I've cross-stitched several things, mostly patterns from my mom's Cross Stitcher magazines. I've even framed a few, which hang on the wall of my bedroom.
Around December 2022 I got into The Legend of Zelda (mostly because I'd played Breath of the Wild) and I took a gander at the Tumblr fandom, as is my typical method of getting into a fandom.
I came across this one person, Nyx, who regularly posted progress pics of a BotW cross stitch project on a side blog. In the game, there's this tapestry that's used as a visual aid to explain the world's history and what your ultimate goal as a player is. Apparently, someone called colorbandiits had made a cross-stitching pattern out of it, which Nyx was now stitching. And it was free to download!
I was in the middle of a Zelda fixation, so obviously I got excited about stitching that pattern. However, I also liked the thought of stitching a big pattern, like my mom had done. There was this big pattern with ancient Roman art she had stitched years ago. It had been framed and hung up inside the house, inside my parents' bedroom. Mom had passed away years before I even discovered this pattern, but stitching this BotW pattern could be a way for me to not only challenge myself, but to 'continue the tradition', in a sense. Make something big and beautiful like my mom had, as part of a hobby she had taught me.
I started tracking my progress on this by coincidence. When I got the linen and got started, I was really excited and took some pictures to share with my friends. I did that often enough in those starting days that it grew into a habit, where I would take a picture of my work every week. I'm getting close to finishing the pattern, and I plan to make a timelapse video out of all those photos.
When I started renovating my website, I decided I also wanted a page dedicated to this thing. That's the page you're looking at right now! I thought it would be awesome to theme it after the Sheikah Slate from BotW, and considering I'm very much an amateur coder, I'm pretty proud of what I've managed to make!
Progress Pictures
Most of the pictures I took were taken while the fabric was still fastened with a hoop. There are hundreds of those pictures now, that kind of happens when you take pictures basically weekly for 3+ years. I'm not gonna put every single one of those here. Instead, I'm gonna be displaying the overall progress pictures I took every now and then.
27 January 2023
I had finished badly hemming the fabric, and made my very first stitches!
24 August 2023
A little less than a quarter of the pattern was stitched. I had traveled from the middle, with Ganon, to Vah Ruta in the bottom right, and used the
red border to loop back around to the bottom middle. My plan was to stitch clockwise, following the order in which I had completed the Divine Beasts in my original
BotW playthrough, and end back in the middle. I'd stitch as many Guardians as I could along the way, because there are over 280 of those little dudes
and I did not want to drive myself insane by having to do all of them at once.
I'd spread out my piece over the couch to take a picture, because that was the only "surface" that had enough free space at the time.
31 December 2023
Pic for New Year's! Making steady progress, stitched some more of the border, the Guardians and Ganon.
9 June 2024
This is the final overview picture I took in my childhood home, before my family and I moved. It's a little bittersweet to look back on.
I spread it out on the table this time, because I had the space this time.
27 January 2025
The second anniversary of the project! Working on Vah Medoh and approaching the 3/4 mark. The end is in sight (kind of).
7 December 2025
Another year's gone by. I took a little break from this project to stitch something else during the summer. It was a refreshing break.
