Intermediate to advanced design; personal composition  Originally posted in 2009; contributed by Julian X.
	Materials: 24 cm circum mari, wrapped in black DMC Floche thread: white and red 321; Sulky rayon machine thread in very dark green; Kreinik Japan gold #5 Marking thread to match mari wrap, thin Prepare an 8-Combination Division

Note - Floche is 4 or 5 ply twisted cotton thread, with a looser and longer twist than pearl cotton. It's a softer thread, with a matte finish, but with a bit of a gleam compared to stranded floss. A pearl cotton #8 may be substituted for floche quite easily in this design, though you may need to adjust the number of rows a little bit. 3 or 4 strands of floss may also be used, but they would need to be laid.

Locate the 6 square areas around each 8-way intersection. Divide each diagonal (8-way to 6-way) in half and place pins. For each square, nudge the pins in towards the center of each square (the 8-way) just a little bit. This allows you to put a final “frame” around your square designs when you’re all done.  Each layer of the pattern is created in two steps: maki kagari wrapped bands first, then masu kagari stitched squares. With first color, wrap bands on either side of the non-diagonal division lines. Wrap however many rows you feel like.  Next, stitch each square with the same number of rows you wrapped, moving outwards with each row. Repeat with another color, wrapping first, then stitching the same number of rows you wrapped. All rounds are simply laid outside and over previous rounds. As you get further out from center, it’s easier to hold things together if you take a tacking stitch periodically as you wrap to keep threads from slipping off the ball.

When the wrap pattern meets the inner boundary of the squares, stitch a “keeper” row around the square wrap intersection to keep everything in place. Stitch as many rows of the darkest design color as are required to fill out each square to the 6-way intersections. To repeat this pattern exactly (note that each round consists of the specified number of rows for both wraps and stitched squares) perform this sequence of steps: R1. Gold for marking. R2. 5 rows white.  R3. 1 row gold.  R4. 5 rows red.  R5. 1 row gold.  R6. 2 rows green. R7. 1 row gold.  R8. 5 rows red.  R9. 1 row gold. 10. 5 rows white.  R11. 1 row gold.   R12. Tack wraps with gold, and fill in remaining space with dark green.

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