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For my kcd embroidery I learned alot of new stitches - I also never really did an embroidery that had really elaborate or any color filling so it was lots to learn on that front.

For the design itself I wanted something very similar to the game but also taking inspiration from art at the time. I usually free hand my embroidery designs but I sketched out something and used some tools for making the window even/look right.

Here's a little collage of some of the references I used (the Henry pic was used very heavily as a reference for his armor though I used a basic Hornskull helmet for his because I liked how it looked on my Henry in game):

Here's me sketching my ideas:

Here's the final design:

I bought some graphite paper to transfer to the fabric which I did for the first and probably last time because God damn it - the graphite smeared on the fabric and it was really hard to write over my design onto it. Heres the same sketch now:

I didn't take a picture of the graphite only but - it didn't do a good job but it got enough down that I could write over it with a water erasable marker - the best pic I have of that is below (You can see the graphite smudging near the bottom):

Before even starting I planned out a bunch and decided my colors. Embroidery works back to front so I did the sky and sun imagery first but Henry was pretty scary. I wanted a good variation of stitches to help differentiate pieces and really capture the right texture of each part (like the roughness of the chainmail or the smooth metal of armor). I downloaded a sketching app on my phone and did some drafting.

Below is the order of things I wanted to work on- a rough idea because I ended up leaving the window/arch and sword alone for awhile. I also crossed out the numbers when I finished them to give me a feeling of progress because it all took over a month to do :p

And here's the one I drew up to help me with my embroidery floss colors (and I wanted to see how it would look altogether so I tried to match the thread color the best I could).

Then it came to the stitches, I didn't know what I wanted in every section but I tried out a few before actually starting on the piece itself because I didn't know how thick the thread I wanted. Below are some pictures/notes from the different types I tried (especially for the sky because it would be taking up so much space).

Here are some other sketches/testing stitches I did for the biggest item other than the window.

Due to the planning there wasn't anything major I had to go back and redo - other than some sections I wasn't happy with the look of. There are definitely some sections I would go back and do differently- like the curiass "shading" or the hood color (tooooo dark blue and saturated for the rest of the piece) but since it's my first big project and I don't want to spend more than a year on this thing or drive myself insane (pulling out stitches can be a bitch) I've decided to keep my happy little accidents.

As for the stitches themselves, I've been heavily utilizing this stitch bank: https://rsnstitchbank.org/

I have a picture with the stitches listed below:

Long and short stitch

Satin stitch (mainly slanted and very occasionally padded)

Outline stitch (because I have a hard time tracking it and stem stitch whoops)

Rope stitch variation

Stem stitch

Heavy chain stitch

Bayeux stitch

Bokhara couching (poorly)

Back stitch

Laid work

French knot

Turkey rug knot

Couching stitch