A - Disney Alphabet Cross Stitch

It's April 1st, which means the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge is finally here! I described my planned theme and a bit of back story for the Theme Reveal post, but before I reveal my first finish, I still need to give a bit more info (and this should be my longest post of the challenge).

You see, there is a lot of work involved in prepping for a stitch start, especially for the likes of me. Fabrics, methods of racking, floss, a lot of decisions have to be made before any stitching can even begin. I chose 18 count Aida fabric in white basically because the design is not advanced and the simplicity of the Aida would work better than linen (linen is harder to use and I wanted this to be as easy as possible). White is my preferred color of fabric and I don't have a lot of different colors in Aida (I have tons of linen colors, but I tend to hoard it instead of use it). I don't like to use hoops because you can only stitch one-handed, so a scroll rod was pretty much the only choice if I wanted to be able to finish nightly in a timely manner. I chose to grid the fabric to save time on counting.

So I started picking from my stash of material and rods:

And wound up here:

Because of the length of the project, I went with a floor stand instead of my preferred lap stand (no picture here...nothing exciting about a stand).

I've been hoarding floss for way too long and it's about time I started using it, so I really didn't have to make much of a decision on that front. But the floss has to be combined into a box and labeled accordingly. My stash is more than one complete set of DMC's here:


And the final result all boxed up for this project:


Once all that work is done, then stitching can start. But there is still one more thing I need to explain...why I chose each character. This was a custom chart designed for me by CloudsFactory, and most all of the characters I picked because they are my favorites..."A" was definitely no exception.

Like most girls, I have a favorite Disney Princess. Her movie is one of the main reasons I'm a Disney freak in the first place. So without further ado, my choice for "A" is Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty in my preferred choice of a blue dress instead of pink!

The grid lines didn't look crooked from afar and my work really doesn't look this shotty from a normal distance, but here she is anyway:


And that's "A" done! Each day I will reveal the character and why I chose it, but I won't show the entire work until I'm finished with it. I still haven't decided whether or not I want to add a header. Maybe you guys can help me on that!