2025 Summary (FlossTube In Text)

Finally finished putting together my YouTube video for 2025. It summarizes all the stuff I put out last year, features many finishes from the community, and talks about what I'm working on now.

I thought it would be pretty nice to condense all of my work in 2025 into one nice cohesive place so people aren't bouncing around between all the various social media.

The first pattern that I posted in 2025 was the fourth one in the Sunset Dragon Ever After High patterns. I really liked working on Maddie. I really liked her color variations and everything that she has. She doesn't have any beads going on, which is very surprising. And a lot of her colors are reused in different context. So, like, I'm pretty sure the blue at the top of her skirt also shows up on the blue in her polka dots on her tights. But she has a lot of unique elements as well, which is why the color count goes so high. She has like a little frill thing on her headpiece. Those colors only show up right there. Her hair has two different selections going on with it. So, uh, the gold on the ribbons for her belt, they're just there. I'm a big fan of her design. As pink and as pretty as Apple White is from Sunset Dragon, I think if I was going to stitch one of the four out of these, it would probably be the Maddie Hatter. She's just so cool.

In February, I finished the Blooming Lovely series from Just Call Me Cat. Uh, these kind of got shuffled in with some other stuff I was doing. I don't feel like I promoted them as well as I should have, but I really, really love, uh, Just Call Me Cat's style. The main one, the Galentine, had an alternate palette that I think Just Call Me Cat was using for tea towels where she has pink hair and a purple dress. But Galentine is using just a little bit of Kreinik to make her bouquet and her glasses sparkle. On Love and Kisses with the ladybugs, the glitter shows up in her polka dots. In Love Birds, the glitter is in the heart on her hair and the arrow that goes through it. And in Sweet Tweets with the cockatiels, there's just a little bit of glitter on her belt and then the phone cord. And the Blooming Lovely tea towel set from Just Call Me Cat is still available. I have a link to it there on her pattern description on the site.

The next big thing that I tackled was finishing the Erte alphabet. I talked about these before, but it was a really big deal for me to finally be done with them. I got really, really hung up on the U pattern because of how much fruit detail there was in the original artwork. I ended up swapping that out for a bunch of beads and sequins. And then I overrode my - my nature to try to have all of those sequins in stock and perfectly count them out. So I left - I left that in the air. It was very freeing to finally be done with it. Getting over that hurdle, I was able to finish the V, W, X, Y, and Z. I don't have a lot to say about most of those. V, W, X, and Y were just in the way of me getting to Z, uh, which was what I really wanted to do. And Z is, I think, one of the prettiest patterns in the alphabet from Erte. She's covered with glitter. She's covered with beads. She's got the fabric is all swirled around her, so there's a lot of interesting texture and shape to it. A very fun pattern to do. If I was gonna stitch a letter, I think it would be Z - if not the L, because L is the famous one with the leopard - but I really like Z and I hope one day I have, um, an excuse to stitch her.

Uh, once the Erte hurdle was finished, I was able to start working on the Hannah Alexander Pokémon with less guilt. I brought in the first trio, the original starters, uh, Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle, and I was able to go in and make modesty edits for Bulbasaur and Charmander to kind of get ahead of those requests. I was trying to do one for Squirtle as well, but I ended up just - I wasn't happy with anything that I came up with for it. Uh, Bulbasaur ended up - she has some crystals involved at the bottom of her skirt. Uh, and then later in the year when I partnered up with String Theory Needle Arts to do bead packs, it was like, "Eh, let's make those crystals optional," because you can do the whole Bulbasaur piece without spending however much it is to get all those, uh, crystals for the bottom. And then Charmander, I sourced an optional crystal for her forehead gem, which has turned out to be kind of a pain in the butt to ship. A couple - couple different times it broke in mailing. Uh, I tried, you know, bubble wrapping them and they were still coming out broken. So, unfortunately, I had to put them over into the more expensive shipping option so that they can, uh, get, you know, just that much more padding so that they arrive safely.

And I had a Charmander finish, uh, like, immediately. Uh, this was it was very surprising to me. Uh, I'm not going to pronounce her name correctly. Jana Uy Dela Pena, she finished Charmander so fast! Uh, it's very, very rare for me to see a pattern release and be finished stitched in the same year. Uh, and that happened a couple times this year. Uh, which is very cool. She did not use the forehead gem in her's, but I think the stitched version still looks beautiful. And I'm really, really pleased with how the flames in the skirt turned out. It's - it's how I envisioned it to be and I'm - I'm very pleased.

Uh, then we had a little bit of a of a pattern break. Uh, I was working on some commission stuff which included the Karen Hallion patterns. I managed to finish three of them which is the Speak Doctor - which is mostly line work - uh, the I Will End You cat, and then the No King Lady Liberty. I don't have, um, the ability to release these. Uh, that's on Karen Hallion to release if she so wants. Not sure how much I want to say about these... Mom and I worked really hard on the Lady Liberty color palette. We ended up eliminating, she has this kind of a reddish grayish blush. Putting that in was making the color count go kind of crazy. So, we had settled for just making it more shaded green to keep up with the rest of it. I ended up test stitching a little bit of the I Will End You cat's, uh, potion bottle there. I found the test stitch for that little potion bottle. I'll put the picture in here.

The other commission that was taking up a lot of time right here was these dogs. This was just a basic photo conversion to a pattern. We had isolated the dog's faces from the rest of the photo and then I just popped it in and stitched it. But this particular piece I had set aside, uh, and took pictures of the back. Uh, I was going to do a whole video about, uh, perfectionism and having the back be messy. And I still might do that in the future. Maybe a little ironically I haven't felt like I have the perfect approach for it yet. Of course doing a video about perfectionism and being a little bit of a perfectionist myself it ends up with it being almost the middle of January and I - and I'm still working on the 2025 summary video. Haha. Uh, this was fine to stitch. It's not my favorite style of stitching, but I think it turned out nice and it's what my customer wanted and she was really happy and eventually it'll become a - a main example for the perfectionism video.

There was another small commission at this time. I had a new customer. They sent me a photo. Someone else had finished one. I don't even know if they had a pattern, but they sent me a photo of one and they said, "Can you do this?" I made a pattern from the photo. I was like, "Do you want the text to be different color, a different - we could do a different font." And they said, "No, no, exactly like the photo." That's what I did. Uh, and this was just a small little piece, but this was easy. And this customer was also very happy with the - the finished piece.

Then I went back to working on the Hannah Alexander Pokémon. Um, I got a little excited and ahead of myself. I was supposed to be working on the fancy ladies, but I ended up working on her Eevee in the Flowers sticker design, uh, for a moment instead. So, the Eevee in flowers. Um, I was able to use some of those color palettes over on - especially the shiny palette - over on the fancy dressed Eevee. I commented on these in a previous video. Um, but I really liked the shiny Eevee. I like that we winterized her, me and my mom. I like how autumnal the regular Eevee's flowers and leaves are. I like that we were able to incorporate some of the Rainbow Gallery fuzzy stuff into her wristbands, and neck, and I - I think it's the bottoms of her pants there.

On the Pikachu I'm glad that I was able to simplify the electricity pattern going on with her skirt blouse. And then, as I talked about with Cubone before, I'm very, very pleased with how her shiny version turned out. When I was initially planning these out, I didn't think I was going to do the shiny Cubone because she's green and I was like, I don't know, that might be too weird. We were able to isolate it pretty well. And I - I'm very happy with the results on there.

I was afraid that the Gengar, Gastly, and Mimikyu patterns were going to take a lot longer than, uh, they ended up taking, especially the Gastly. She has these little like layered tulle, very sheer fabric layers all over herself. And I was just like, "Oh, this is - that's really gonna be a pain in the butt to isolate where goes where." I was thinking about previous patterns I've done with Hannah's work where there's a lot of sheer like the Boosette and I was just like, "Oh, I'm not looking forward to it." But it was actually laid out really nicely once I got working on it. And I found it pretty - pretty quick to do. The Mimikyu was a lot of straight lines and even though they're kind of a dirty cream to the monochrome version, picking out the colors wasn't so bad.

Gengar was the hardest of that trio and I couldn't get the - it's like the mega shiny version of Gengar to work, which is mostly white with, like, a little bit of pink involved. Stitch white and nothing but white for hours and then you're - and then it's the shape of a Gengar and you outline it. Like, it just wasn't working. It'd be it'd be easier to not stitch anything and just work on white fabric and then do the back stitching onto it. Like, it was just not happening. It is what it is. I'm - I'm pleased with how the Gengar itself looks from Hannah's original artwork. I'm just frustrated that I couldn't get the shiny going.

And then the Kodama was the first Patreon early access pattern that came out. This was just a small design to start it off because of everything else that I was working on, but I wanted to get the Patreon rolling and I knew that, uh, if I picked a big design to start, I would stress myself out. So, the Kodama was the first one. This was really cute to do. DMC as always has lots of greens to pick from, so it wasn't difficult to decide what to do with like the leaves. And of course, pink is my specialty. So, I really liked picking out those little flowers and the shading within that. I haven't seen the movie, uh, yet. I know that I need to. It's on my list, but I know that these weird little guys glow in the dark. So, it was important to me to get the glow-in-the-dark thread in there. Alice Roy, who has helped us, um, a ton, she finished a shorter version of the Kodama pattern. She - I think what she told me was that the fabric she picked ended up being too short and so she just, uh, adjusted where her pattern ended. I'm thankful to have received a a picture of it glowing in the dark as well. The shading that I added there worked nicely and I'm - I'm always really happy when what I'm envisioning, you know, comes out in reality.

The 10 year sale had me going back through and revising how I do my PDFs. Because it was the Hannah Alexander sale I was focusing very hard on finishing her patterns first. I still have 131 patterns to revise, which is part of my plan for this year, which I'll talk about later. But the biggest thing for me was getting the Hannah Alexander stuff done before the sale went live. There was some very obvious stuff that I did, like, for the Belle pattern which came out in 2015. Back when I first did patterns, obviously it was the beginning. So I didn't have a style established. So I was able to go back in at last clean those up, especially for the symbol choices. There's been some discontinued beads that I was able to replace in the symbol chart. I was able to make it much more readable to my current standards. Overall, I think a great improvement just - just in that I went through and I put the material lists and symbol keys at the start of the pattern. Now, I made the read me pages, which includes like recommendations for where you can get materials at the beginning. I made those actually, like, fun to look at pages and not just, like, walls of text that I know people scrolled right by.

The big additions were the Ariel, uh, got new colors. Uh, new old colors. These were from Hannah Alexander's initial sketches and trying to plan out what color she wanted to do. And I don't know when I discovered them. It was a while back, but I was like, you know, I wish she had done the pink dress instead of the green one. And it was always in, you know, kind of the back of my mind that I wanted to revisit these test colors that Hannah had rejected.

And then, of course, in going back and doing that, I got myself a little worked up and I made some new colors for Link. Originally, Link only came in green and blue, which are the two colors that Hannah Alexander made available to her customers directly. If you bought a postcard from her or a print from her, it would be a green or a blue Link. Zelda has more colors, I think Link should have some more colors. In some of the Zelda games, you can play with four players, and they differentiate those four players with colors, of course. His Super Smash Brothers palette has a very cool gold, and when my brother plays Super Smash, he's almost always the gold Link. And I figured I couldn't leave Dark Link out. Plus, it'd be very fun to change things up. And that's exactly what I did. You know, I gave him dying leaves and a little a dying Korok leaf on his head. I reworked the blacks and grays in his tunic quite a bit. I didn't want to completely eliminate all of the shading from the original artwork, but it's, you know, it's hard to shade with black.

And then I [gasps] I got a little carried away and decided I wanted to include Fierce Deity Link as well. Fierce Deity Link doesn't wield the Master Sword. He wields his own swirly blade thing. And I was like, well, how am I going to do it? How how can I make this work? And I ended up doing some really poor photoshopping of getting it lined up so that it would match the same angle as the Master Sword from Hannah Alexander's original artwork. It - oh gosh - it was so much work. And then I realized I didn't want the Korok leaf in his hair 'cause it - Fierce Deity has no connection to that. So I was like, well, I - I guess I should draw the Majora's Mask in his hair. But I'm happy with the result. I feel like I nailed the the concept of this and putting it together. I adjusted his collar to be more like his design and overall it was just a lot of fun to put together.

Bottle items were a very big thing for me growing up. I mentioned a a video or two ago that I really like things in bottles just in a general kind of way. It - it probably comes from Zelda. Haha. So, originally I just wanted to make it an option to change the color of his potion on his belt. In Hannah's original artwork, it's a blue potion. So, I wanted to have the red and green for health and magic. And then I was like, well, while while I'm here, I - I could try to do the other - the other bottle items. Uh, so I did LonLon milk 'cause it made the most sense to me because of the the potion shape already. I put the cow on there and then I was like, wait a minute, this is actually like really cool. So, I went in, I found the list of bottle items. I did my very best to match their shape. The hardest one to draw was the bug. Uh, getting the bug - is such a small nothing image in the bottles and trying to get that to work on the grid was really tough, but I'm happy with the result. Just for the sake of making it a complete grid, I decided that I was going to take on the challenge of the Deku Princess. She's only in the bottle for, like, a minute, but I think it's great that she's a bottle item and I couldn't pass up on it.

I had finished the Zelda Halo pattern at that time, but I was saving that so that Maggie could stitch it and do the test stitching and Alice Roy had created the Secret Stone specialty beads to go with that. So, even though Zelda Halo didn't release until later and was finished by Maggie before it came out... congratulations to her staying on schedule for that. And thank you to her for finishing it. Really brought my confidence up in many ways, but especially in the color choices for her skin. That was really, really stressful for me. I'm super happy with how it turned out. I'm very pleased to see that the glittering thread and the beads that I picked. You know, everything came together the way I envisioned it to, right down to the little beads at the end of the flowers and the way that the clouds blend. It - It all turned out the way I wanted. And I'm - I'm very happy to see it come to life so quickly.

And with finishing the sale, I was able to convince Hannah, uh, with the raw data that people really still were for real interested in more more Disney fan art. And I was able to convince her of some of her remastered, or revisited, artwork. So I was able to get like the new version of Alice, the new version of Anastasia, the blue dress Anastasia, which did which did come out last year. There's a new version of Anna. Both the Anna and the Elsa are from the second movie, I think. There's a modern Mulan and an Ariel that wasn't in that picture. There's an old piece of artwork, a Wendy Darling from Peter Pan. We got the Shipwreck Ariel dress, which I know was a huge request for a long time. This one also came out at some point last year. I got real excited about it. I went ahead and I got a whole bunch of specialty materials for her, uh, who's its and what's its.

People had been requesting villains for quite a quite a long time and I was able to nab those. Hades is the one I'm the least certain about just because of how detailed her background is. The others I feel... I'm going to say equally confident in my ability to tackle them. There's a ThreadWorx color called bleeding hearts and I already had it like probably a couple years ago in my mind for a color that I needed to incorporate into the Queen of Hearts. I don't know where exactly, probably in her bodice, maybe in the sleeves, but I have to use that color in her design. It's fate. It - It has to happen. And then hopefully I can get all of those villains done kind of together. There's five of them and I like to do trios. At the end of last year, I had said I kind of want to be able to mix and match a little bit in my trios, especially with how many Pokémon designs I have on my plate.

So, right after the sale, I had a release of a pattern from 2024, which was the bisexuality from Richard Ellescas, I think is how that's pronounced. And that came out alongside the Cowboy Opossum from Grace Kinkle. Cowboy Opossum is super cute. I'm a big fan. I'm really happy that Grace let me use her artwork for this and bring it together for us.

So, I had a couple more commissions to get done before the year was up. And I had some gifts that I needed to do. The commission was - it's two people that I wanted to respect the privacy of. So, being able to show it online is - it's a little - I was like, how do I censor this and still show it? So, this is what I went with. I think it's a little weird. It's a lot less weird uncensored. Haha. Uh, my customer was really happy with it. Then I did a gift for my mom, which went over very well at Christmas. I did a gift for my cousin. Gift for my cousin didn't survive the mail. Apparently, it got wet along the way, which is a major bummer. And it - yeah, it didn't - it didn't survive and I have to redo this one. I'm really sad about it.

Rogue was from Hannah Alexander was Patreon early access number two. Um, I mixed styles for this one. The background is done in just a picture to pattern conversion kind of a thing. And I recorded my process for this. The background is more popcorny. I still went through and refined it a bit, but it has that, you know, out of focus, low resolution kind of a thing going for it - for the background. And then the foreground, which is the character proper, is in my usual style. And I'm - I'm pretty happy with how she turned out. I think that she'll be really pretty when I get to see her, uh, turn out - when people stitch her.

And then with Espeon and Umbreon, I released the Aerial Shipwreck with all of her supplies. Espeon is one of my favorite Pokémons, and I was really pleased to do Hannah's design for her. She doesn't use any Kreinik, which was bothering me. I kept trying to put Kreinik in where it didn't belong. I made a modesty edit for this. If I had worn this dress, uh, in real life, I would absolutely want to cover that split in the top there. I'm extremely pleased with how the green shiny version came out for her. I ended up not having to change the bluer parts. So, just the pinkish purple ended up changing and I - I think it all still blended together super well. Umbreon was super quick to do. Being another grayscale dress, this was real fast to put together. Umbreon only has a little bit of color and Umbreon shiny is one of the coolest shinies that we get. So, I wanted to make sure to really nail those blue Kreinik colors, make sure everything sparkles the way that it should. I didn't realize offhand that shiny Umbreon had different color eyes, so I was able to pull one of regular Umbreon's hair tip colors and use them there.

I did a Christmas - Christmas-y cookie decorating pattern with Hanae Kariko. This uses the glittery etoile DMC cotton thread for the pan. It uses a variegated thread for the table. In Hanae's original artwork, the table has more texture to it, but not really hard outlines. So, I chose the variegated thread to kind of mimic that without making it too complicated. I think it's a really cute pattern. and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Then we had more Eevees here: the Glaceon, Leafeon, and Sylveon, which came out with the Anastasia Opera. Um, her song has to do with December, and I really wanted to get it out as not just a final push and thank you for the anniversary sale, but otherwise, I would wait until December 2026 to release her, and I was like, "No, I got to get it done in time." Haha. Glaceon was kind of a tough pattern to do. Uh, my instinct was to make Glaceon and her dress itself the sparkly part, but in Hannah's design, she covered her with beads. So, that's where most of the glitter ended up going. It was pretty similar for me as with working with the Espeon because I just kept wanting to add Kreinik where it didn't belong. And it was - it was tough. The types of blues that Glaceon uses are for all of DMC's blue palette, uh, a bit restricted. So getting that to come together was kind of tough. Leafeon went pretty well. This is another design that uses hardly any Kreinik. I think it might just be on the shoes. The original Leafeon art had pretty placeholder feet there. So I did have to go in and draw toes which was very difficult for me. It's not something that I usually do. I think I borrowed from maybe one of the Winx girls to try to get the shape in just right.

Sylveon is I'm I'm sure you could predict another one of my favorite Pokemon. Doing this was a lot of fun. Figuring out her shiny version and flipping that palette around was also a lot of fun. Part of me kept trying to just mash it up so that Sylveon would be just, like, all pink, but there's not enough shade difference within the artwork. I - I'd have to come up with basically an entirely new third palette to make it work. Getting all those gradients to work was fun. Putting the beads together was fun. Picking out which Kreinik could work for both the regular and the shiny version was fun. All in all, really enjoyed putting this pattern together. I hope that people really like stitching her.

The third early access pattern I did finish in 2025, but didn't release until the 1st here this year, and that's the No Face design again from Hannah Alexander. She's currently early access. She will release March 31st to avoid an April Fool's Day situation.

And then the final piece of stitching that I got done for presents was the hippo. This is Moo Deng. A pattern I bought last year and stitched last year from Etsy. StephXstitch.

And then the very last stitching of the year I was able to get it done in time. I still need to take pretty photos of it, but I finished my very first Hannah Alexander pattern!! Yes! Haha. I'm really really happy with it. I didn't add the text because I just don't like stitching text. I did make one mistake on it, but I covered it up pretty good, I think. Super happy with this. And I know that I made the pattern and I got permission from Hannah, and you know, I'm involved with this every step of the way. But it's - it's exactly what I wanted it to be. It's got the pretty gradient. It has pretty outlines. I did it on the - my favorite glitter fabric. Just real happy with it all the way around. Happy to finally have this accomplishment of finishing a Hannah pattern. And I think that's a real nice way to wrap up 2025 for me. I'm very happy to have it.

And then I'd also like to show off some of the finishes of my patterns that I received and got permission to show off. Doesn't mean that there aren't more finishes out there. Just these are the ones that were sent to me and I got permission for.

Angela Philpitt finished an Aang. Really pleased to see how glittery the stitching on his little scarf shawl thing there turned out. And it looks like she did the fuzzy stitching on Momo, which is really cool.

Jessica Schneider's, um, finished Anastasia with all silk. She did a conversion with all silk thread. Finally got - came back from the framers, so that's super cool. This is, I think, that real fancy framing studio that like all of us, um, covet, haha, who did the framing for this, I believe.

A finished Charmander. I'm - I talked about this one a little earlier, but I'm going to show you the difference between the before backstitching and after backstitching. I love that she sent in both of these photos. So - so crisp and clear so I can have a direct compare and contrast between them. It's very cool. Very happy to see the finish in the same year it came out there.

Cassandra Reesor finished Daisy in the purple armor. Very cool. Didn't expect it. I hadn't seen any progress photos from this customer before. She just emailed me and was like, "Look, I did it." And I was like, "Oh, that's so cool! Thank you!" Very happy to see how I envision it, you know, when I made the pattern to come out and be real. I'm very pleased to see how glittery the armor is. I really like seeing how the beads work along the bottom. I like seeing that lacy effect come through on the sheer fabric. Really happy just to get the photos. It's so cool.

Amanda Julian finished stitching all of the Hanae Kariko [eeveelutions], uh, on one piece of fabric there. Love seeing them all together. That's so cool.

Jamie Flores finished Kida. I loved seeing - I saw some of her videos for this. I forget if I was linked directly or someone mentioned them to me. I don't follow a lot of other stuff going on on YouTube, but I got to see a video of this one being - she held it up close and, like, tapped her fingers on the beads and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know how badly I wanted to hear that." It's - she - Kida has so many beads and Jamie did a really good job just giving giving me those up close views of how the beads look in person is just delightful. I'm so happy to see them. We're very proud of her stitch work here and super grateful to to see it done.

I talked about, uh, earlier this one, the Kodama stitched by Alice Roy. Uh, again, shortened because of her fabric and then she was very nice enough to show off the picture of them glowing in the dark.

Marianne Marcoux finished the Korok this year - or last year. Really happy to see this one. This isn't the first finish I've seen of the Korok, but, um, I really like how she's put it in this oval, especially with the little bit of wood grain to it. I feel like that matches the Karo, you know, vibe really well. I really like it.

Anais Schira finished the Master Sword. Looks like that she picked the glittery version. Lots of Kreinik metallics going on there. Very pleased. Again, not the first Master Sword I've seen, but I really like seeing what people do with it. And I believe, if I remember correctly, those beads do glow in the dark in the flowers there to mimic how they are in the game. But I don't have a photo from Anais of them doing that.

Louise Darby finished a Merida. Merida is a huge favorite. I think the most finishes that I have are of Merida. No huge surprise there considering Merida is one of the oldest patterns that I put out back in 2015.

Jennifer Ivy Austin finished a Moana and she did the oval decoration which is another -another option to go with for ovals which I think is so cool that the community comes together and does that. This is - she finished it just right before I was able to revamp Moana. So this is now the old version of the pattern but I think she did an amazing job with it and nailed all of those weird little lace thingies at the bottom of everything.

We have another finish from Jana Uy Dela Pena. This is the Sailor Moon with Luna on the moon. I really like seeing the moon stitched right here. This - that metallic shine to it is - I think it's very neat. Jana here did a really really nice job with it. Very, very happy to see it come together.

Sarah Young finished a Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. This, I think, is one of the harder patterns just because of how many different textures and layers and things that she has going on with her dress here. Doing all those little beads and everything that's involved. I'm a big sucker for the bead work that I put into my own designs. They're so cool.

I had two Suki finishes. One from Sarah Young and one from Nina (oh, how...) Daoadottir. I'm sure you guys didn't coordinate it, but thanks for choosing the different faces. Very cool to see both of them side by side. And then Sarah went all out with the oval and designs. These are custom designs that Sarah Young did for all of Hannah Alexander's Avatar series. I just need to go through and chart them so that we can all enjoy them. Really nice work from both of them using that really thick extra DMC thread for their I want to say rope. Really nice work, uh, again for both of them on her tassels. Just all around real happy to see it.

Amanda Losey finished Thumbelina. I love the Thumbelina. She's so sparkly and pretty. And this is finished with the frame and the mat. And I like that she has the oval going on for her mat. You know, it mirrors the oval that she stitched really nicely. She did the one over one skin, which is crazy. It's very cool. Thank you. Thank - thank everyone. Thank you all for sending me finished photos.

Here's a third finish from Sarah Young. This is the Ty Lee, again with the custom oval decoration. Instead of using bells for the end of her hair ribbon like the pattern suggested, she used different beads there. The torso neck collar dangly thingies. I didn't think I would see a finished Ty Lee so soon. She has crazy detail in both her collar beads and the dragon all over her pants. This is an amazing finish from Sarah here. And this isn't the last one that she did this year.

She also finished Yue or - I haven't finished Avatar. Um, it might be Yue... the moon lady. Just outstanding work from Sarah. Four finishes. That's - Oh! That a lot. Really pleased to see how the star beads turned out. Really happy to see those clusters of beads for the moon in the skirt. I feel like those all turned out really nice. I'm sure the stitching on this in person is pretty heavy that, you know, that must be pretty weighed down fabric at this point 'cause there's just so many beads on her dress.

And then there were two Zelda finishes. One from Amanda Julien, which has the brown hair and pink dress. And then the same dress color, but with custom purple hair from Erin Buchanan. Both did amazing work. It looks like they both used real chains on the hips. Erin did the tassels at the bottom. Super pretty. I - I really like those 3D elements. Um, and both of them just nailed the crazy amount of backstitching that goes into the hair and all of that armor work. It's - oh! Haha - it's a lot. And Erin even did the oval, too. Oh, that's a lot! You guys did so much work. Thank you. Thank you for doing work and sharing it with me. It's so nice to see.

I think that covers everything for last year. So now I'm going to talk a bit about what's coming up. I put a public Patreon post out about this and then essentially the same thing went out as my newest newsletter. So I'm just going to recap.

The big thing that I didn't finish last year that was on the to-do list was Alphonse Mucha's Moon and her partner patterns. I didn't have any illusions that I would finish before the end of 2025, but are at the top of the to-do list. Uh, the evening star, morning star, and pole star. Every time I open these patterns, I get intimidated. I - I'm very, you know, when I open a Hannah Alexander piece there, she does her painting and such digitally. Even though there's a lot of colors and gradients going on and - and detailed line work, it's much easier to follow both her thought process and where the artwork is going. Alphonse Mucha, he worked over a hundred years ago, uh, with watercolor and these original pieces are some - they're like 6 feet tall. They're huge paintings and I'm trying to condense all of that down into a feasible size to stitch. you know, I open the pattern up and I'm like, "Oh, what am I doing?" Haha. I get hit with, like, major impostor syndrome. I kind of panic. I do a little bit of work and then I run away to something that I'm more comfortable with. Or I do chores like laundry and dishes just - just to keep myself - I'm not just sitting. I'm not not working, right? I'm not guilty of not working. I'm just not working on what I'm supposed to be working on.

So, I did get all the way through her frame. I got all the way through color mapping that frame, which was scary of itself. I finished mapping out her flower crown, and hair. Scary. And I did the skin, which has actually been the least scary part of all this. But I know that when we go in to pick colors, I'm going to panic again. His color palette is not the same as Hannah Alexander's color palette. So - so, that'll be tough again when we get there. I started mapping out where colors are going to go on the dress. I think I can do it, but I'm pretty stressed out about how the background is gunna do. Of the four pieces, I think Moon's background will be the most challenging. Evening, morning, and pole all have a pretty distinct gradient from top to bottom on where their colors are going. The moon is, uh, a little splotchy in where the colors are, and she's got a glow to her moon that is very particular. And so I'm kind of afraid... I'm kind of afraid of the background.

The stars on her dress, if I get my way, are going to be metallic. I'd like to carry that through to the others in the series. Pole star doesn't have the decorations on her dress like the other three do, but I think I should be able to work some metallics in anyway. And I'd like to use variegated threads throughout the frame to keep the color count down on these pieces. Especially because the frame itself will be so optional and extra. I'm working very hard to pattern these in such a way that if you didn't do the frame, you would still have a complete piece. Much like if you bought a print of his original artwork, if it came without the frames, you wouldn't feel like you were missing out.

Hannah Alexander did do more Pokemon artwork last year that I haven't added to the roster on my patterns yet. Until I get permission for those I have nine left. We have Flareon, Jolteon, Vaporeon, Drifloon, Litwick, Mismagius, and then three little sticker design of the original Kanto starters.

I mentioned a little earlier, but I still have 131 patterns and tutorials that need to be properly revisited, brought up to the new PDF standard. Some of these will go pretty quick. There's the Erte alphabet. I feel like that'll go fast. I just need to block out the time to do them. There's some I went to revise and - and I just decided that they weren't really worth even that much time. These were just patterns that no one ever bought or or very, very few people ever bought and I just decided to end support for them. I did it so quickly. Uh, this quite unlike me. I kind of don't even know which ones that I took out. I was - I was just that done with them. And then one of these right after I did this, someone messaged me and was like, "Wah! I was going to buy that." And I was like, "Where did you come from?" So, even though there's 131 things still on this list, it doesn't mean 131 things will go back up.

Now, right along with getting everything reformatted and revisited, obviously, I spent most of my time bringing the Hannah Alexander designs up because of that anniversary sale. The Frenone designs, her World of Warcraft designs, I feel like also need some pretty hands-on updates, mostly in the greenery and swirly flowers that she has in her - behind the characters as part of the frame. Kind of? Frenone retired from artwork a while ago. So, we're not going to get more pieces out of this series that she did, which is a shame because there are more pieces that she did. We just won't be getting them. So, I have nine designs left that I had permission from her to do. And all of them except the one angel, which I might not be able to do because I didn't get a very large resolution file from her for that. They all have that same swirly plant matter behind them.

In Frenone's original artwork, she has outlined all of the stems and leaves and everything with - with the black thread. And of course, when I go through and I make patterns, my - my main thing is to match the artwork as closely as possible. But it kind of makes it not fun, I think, to stitch. I have three photos of finished patterns. One from Kristen Roskam of Sylvanas. Two from Amanda Julian: Jana, and Yera. Super beautiful finished work, guys. Thank you for sending your photos to me. I remember reading in their - either their progress photos or the finished posts or perhaps when they had sent it to me, maybe just in the comments generally, it was like those little swirly dodad plants just killing the progress. And I look at them myself and I don't want to stitch all those little swirly leaves. I want to just backstitch those. Uh, my - my intent is to go back through on some of these and much like revising those older Hannah Alexander patterns, I'd like to go through and kind of bring those up to more my current standards on pattern making. And wanting to revise those has kind of slowed me down on wanting to do this final set of patterns because I want the same design throughout, right, the whole series.

The other thing that kind of slows me down with this is that I don't get a lot of return. These patterns can take as long, if not longer, than some of the Hannah Alexander designs do, and I really don't have a lot of customer base for them. I still really really love Frenone's artwork. I still enjoy making the designs, but when I have this much on my plate, it's just - it's kind of easier to put them aside continuously and not finish them. Which kind of feeds on itself, you know? If I don't finish them, I don't get the customers. And then because I don't have the customers, I - I don't prioritize them. So this year, as I've said, you know, multiple years in the past now already, I would really like to set aside dedicated time to just finish the Frenone series. I don't have the hang-ups like I did for the Erte series with how art blocked I was with U. It's not like that. It's just so much work that I know needs to be done.

Sunset Dragon is the other main artist that I'm working with right now. Even though I've only finished four of her designs, I have a lot of permission already from her to - to go forward. Most of them are the Pokemon mermaid designs that she does for MerMay. All but I think the Eeveeutions and Misty are water type Pokémon that she has then turned into mermaids. Not counting the, uh, My Little Pony and I think it's the Monster High, the other series that I have permission for at the moment. Her mermaid designs generally don't have scales in the tail, which should make it pretty easy for me to pattern since most of the design work will be in color placement and not so much in 20 hours of drawing scales. Haha. And I - I showed a lot of love to Hannah Alexander last year, especially with the sale and bringing everything up to date. I'd really like to do more of the Sunset Dragon designs and get her better into my rotation.

Again, with so many Pokemon patterns, both in Sunset Dragon and Hannah Alexander and Hanae Kariko's portfolios, I - I don't want to drown everybody out. The plan is to focus on the not-Pokemon Sunset Dragon designs. You know, I'd like to get the Monster High out. I'd like to do some of her - the Pony designs that I have permission to do here before I start working on her Pokemon mermaids. She does seem to put out new Pokemon mermaid designs every year. So, the faster I can catch up, the faster I can continue on.

And then, as mentioned here, Hanae Kariko has some more Pokémon designs for us. This was a series that she did for they were like a keychain, I believe, that she - she put out. She sells at conventions. And the artwork becomes the label at the top of the keychain and the theme was like candy or food that went with the different Pokémon. So we had like a strawberry Skitty and like a cotton candy Sylveon... Swabloo berry. We had, um, a chocolate Clodsire, you know, they were just it was kind of a cute mix of themes. These are really pretty small designs, but because of the turnaround time with my mom to get color checking done, these might hold up progress in other ways, but I'd like to get these done. And then there some other Pokémon designs from Hanae that I've had for a while that just haven't made it into rotation yet for the same reason.

For the end here, for the finale, there were three patterns, three Hannah Alexander patterns that I finished the summertime last year. I - I don't think I can even show you, like, their silhouettes because it would give it away immediately. My plan is to have them be the early access patterns this summer. So, it would be June-July 2026 when they would be revealed and voted on, who would be the early access and which ones would become public right away. Which means I need to figure out which designs I want to put up for vote between April and June to be the early access design. I hope you like these three patterns as much as I do. These were a real pain in the butt. One of them took over 40 hours to put together. One of them, I think, was it was over 20 hours just on the line work. They're very intricate designs. It's hard for me not to reveal them early. They've been on my mind for 6 months now, and I'm just like, please, please. I want to put them out, but I - I have to hold out. I - I got to be strong. I hope you'll all be happy with me when when it happens.

I want to thank everyone, especially the names here that I'm going to put up for the Patreon supporters, but not just them. Thank you to my Facebook group. Thank you to the lovely people on Discord. Thank you, uh, super super gracious to the people who send me photos of their finished pieces. There's no way that I'll be able to see most of these physically stitched, let alone in person. And it - it means so much to me to not just be able to bring this to the stitching community, make everything pretty. But, you know, the artists that I work with, the people that believe in me enough to sign up for the Patreon and support me month to month, it means so much to be able to keep doing this and keep doing what I love and make the world a prettier, sparklier place. And I'm just so grateful that I don't have to go back out and get a - a day job. It means more than I can really put into words that - that I get to do this and bring it to us. And I know with everything I just listed out for you, not all of it's going to get done in 2026, but I - I hope that I can keep impressing people and keep doing this.

It's very important to me. Thank you.

Happy new year and happy stitching.