Black Water Sirens

Black Water Sirens by Bella Filipina — a 335w × 303h SAL (stitch-along), released to participants in sections over the run of the SAL rather than as a finished chart up front. Bella Filipina dropped each new section through the BFD Facebook group on a regular cadence; you stitched the most recent piece and waited with the rest of the group for the next one. The full design is four sirens perched on a rocky outcrop above a stormy sea:

• Top of the rock — a green-skinned siren with long brown hair and a kelp / coral crown sits enthroned at the peak, encrusted in beaded jewellery.
• Left — a pale-pink siren with brown hair, pearl necklace and bracelets, posing with one arm raised, tail draped over the rocks.
• Right — a yellow-skinned siren with red hair and a crown of branched coral, the most heavily-beaded of the three.
• Foot of the rock — a smaller fourth figure in pink, kneeling at the base looking up.
• Centre — a chest of lost treasure spilling gold coins and gems on the platform between them.
• Base — a swirling silver-grey sea crashes against the rocks, with bead-foam highlights at the crest of every wave.

Stitched on 32ct Under the Sea Fabrics Dark Waters linen — the chart’s recommended fabric — a hand-dyed opalescent linen mottled in lavender, teal, and silver with iridescent threads woven through, so the unstitched ground reads as the deep glittering blackwater the sirens are watching over. DMC floss throughout plus the chart’s full bead pack (seed beads and bugle beads scattered across the sirens’ jewellery, hair, the treasure, and the wave foam).

The designer did stitchers dirty. As each section dropped, the Facebook group flagged things stitchers wished had been baked into the chart from the start — the fabric not showcasing the mermaids well, the rocks needing more form, more treasure in the chest and around the mermaids. Those fixes never made it into the SAL itself (Bella Filipina did add bras mid-SAL after some stitchers objected to the nudity — which was itself out of the ordinary, since every other Bella Filipina chart features clothed figures). After the SAL wrapped in late 2025, Bella Filipina rolled all of those edits into a clean revised chart and released it for general sale, under a new name and $5 cheaper than the SAL had cost: Sea Witches and the Lost Treasures (BF065). The people who paid more for the version with the problems were the SAL group and after complaint were offered the new chart at a discount; everyone who waited got the corrected chart for less.

Started November 1, 2024. Finished December 22, 2025 — just under fourteen months of stitching alongside the SAL group.