Chatelaine Designs: White Nights of St. Petersburg

If you like large projects, lots of beads, and working with silk and variegated yarn then Chatelaine Designs has a beautiful pattern available featuring Eastern Orthodox Church domes as well as other architectural features of St. Petersburg. 


The full design is stunning (as is to be expected from a Chatelaine design):

 Source: Martina, Weber - Chatelaine Designs

Review
I am really enjoying working on this project.  The colors are beautiful and the pattern is complicated enough that you don't get bored from doing the same thing over and over.  Perhaps my feelings on that will change once I get to the border, which seems to be the largest repetative piece.  I have never worked with either silks or petite braid metallics before so it has been a treat.  I particularly like the petite braid in comparison to regular DMC metallic thread.  I may make this my substitute of choice from now on.  The braid doesn't have the fraying problems of the thread and there is also a much greater variety of shades. 


Cost
The pattern is reasonable for the size and intricacy of the design, but making it up using all of the silk threads can be very costly.  If you don't want to make any substitutions then I recommend buying the kit if you can as it will save money vs. trying to find the threads elsewhere.  If you do wish to substitute or buy threads as you go, then there is an option of purchasing just the bead pack.  I priced out beads through other sources and found the pack to be the most affordable by far.


Availability
The pattern is available as a PDF or chart pat from the European Crosstitch Company.  They also sell full kits with fabric, full kits w/o fabric, and bead packs.  The information for this pattern is here:  http://europeanxs.com/cgi-bin/chat_detail.pl?CD057-


Support
There is a Chatelaine Design Yahoo Group you can join if you want to share your progress or get clarification on the instructions.  The Chatelaine Design forum archived the sub-forum for this design which contains many tips and hints.  Both of these can be found throught he Chatelaine Designs Web site.

Center Medallian and start of colums/gates

White Nights - WIP 4/11 on Flickr.