I printed the outline on two A4 sheets, glued it onto a thicker paper and pinned it onto the lace pillow (I think that’s how its called in Eenglush).

I started with the head and immediately made a mistake despite checking the sketch several times before starting. The head was supposed to be orange, not red. But it is red now, I am not starting all over – I only noticed the mistake today when the neck and body are finished too.

The body was fairly difficult to make. This is the first time that I have incorporated a golden thread – on the outlines of each segment. I think the golden sparkle should work perfectly with a firebird. However the golden thread is a bit fiddly – it is rougher than normal thread and more brittle, thus it is prone to breaking and difficult to pull through a hole with a crochet hook when attaching new bobbins to existing structures.

I will show you the progress next time too. I got a small commission to sharpen about twenty knives so I have spent two days in the Worskhop sharpening and today I have been mostly resting and thinking about how to make the tail feathers. I have made the torso with eight pairs of red-thread bobbins. That way when I transitioned over to the triangular-ish tail segment, I put aside two bobbins whenever I reached the base of a tail feather and I only added one more red pair at the end (there are 9 tail feathers). I want to make the tail feathers from several colors with red lines running through the center. There are several ways to do this and I am mulling over which one to use.