Designer's Final Mandala Release Features Three Free Starry Night Patterns

Esther Dijkstra of It's All in a Nutshell has shared her Starry Night Mandalas, a free crochet pattern that carries real weight in the community: she describes this as her "final mandala design before retiring from crochet designing." For anyone who has followed her work through Trinity, Triptych, and Enigma Mandalas, this release lands as a genuine capstone. It has the hallmarks of everything she does well: a cohesive three-part set, Scheepjes Catona in a considered palette, meticulous tutorial support, and a design that rewards intermediate makers who want to sharpen their colourwork and stitch precision.

The finished mandalas each measure 20cm in diameter. Metal rings help stabilize them and make it possible to hang them on a wall, which makes the full set a natural candidate for a gallery-style arrangement, grouped coasters, or handmade gift sets. The patterns are free on the blog, with written instructions available in both English (US terms) and Dutch, and video tutorials available in English US terms. If you want everything consolidated into one printable file, a paid PDF is also available on Ravelry.

Super Nova

The set opens with the Super Nova mandala in Part 1. The name alone signals what Dijkstra is going for aesthetically: bold, radiating, built around a sense of outward energy. As the first piece in the sequence, it sets the colour logic and structural rhythm that carries through to the other two. Working it first gives you a feel for how the Scheepjes Catona behaves on a 3.0mm hook before the design complexity develops in the subsequent parts. For makers new to Dijkstra's mandala construction, Super Nova is the smart entry point whether you intend to make all three or just pick one to try.

Dark Star

Part 2 introduces the Dark Star mandala. Where Super Nova radiates outward, the Dark Star name suggests contrast and depth, the kind of design that likely leans into the darker shades within the four-colour palette to create visual tension against the lighter tones. Dijkstra has consistently used colour placement as a design tool across her mandala series, and this middle piece in the Starry Night set holds the tonal range together. It works independently as a statement piece, but it also functions as the bridge in a wall-hung trio, pulling the eye between the brightness of Super Nova and the expansiveness of Milky Way.

Milky Way

The third and final design, Milky Way, closes out the set and, symbolically, Dijkstra's mandala-designing career. Its name nods to the sweeping, scattered quality of a galaxy viewed from the ground, which suggests a design built on spread and rhythm rather than tight central focus. As Dijkstra frames it: "These are different 3 mandalas that you can make as a set or make on their own," and Milky Way demonstrates why that modularity works. It reads beautifully in isolation, but placed alongside Super Nova and Dark Star, it completes a narrative arc from a single explosive star to the full night sky.

Materials and Tutorials

The materials list is clean and accessible. You will need four colours of Scheepjes Catona (50g/125m) and a 3.0mm hook. Catona is a mercerised cotton with excellent stitch definition, which is exactly what you want for mandala work where the shaping relies on clean round-by-round structure. The 50g/125m skeins are widely available through UK, US, and European stockists, and the colour range runs to over 100 shades, meaning you have genuine freedom to depart from the suggested palette and build something personal.

Tutorial support is notably thorough. The post includes links to right- and left-handed video tutorial playlists on YouTube, which is the kind of inclusion that separates a well-considered pattern release from one that just drops written instructions and leaves makers to figure out the rest. Whether you learn better from watching or reading, the resources are there. There are also links to Ravelry project pages, which means you can browse finished makes for colour inspiration and add your own to the growing project album as the community works through the set.

The #itsallinanutshell hashtag on Instagram is where you will find makers sharing their progress, and given the personal significance of this release as Dijkstra's final mandala design, it is worth following along. A capstone collection from a designer whose work has been circulating in crochet feeds for years tends to generate exactly the kind of community moment that fills Ravelry project pages and Instagram grids with colour. Start with Super Nova, work your way through to Milky Way, and you will have something genuinely worth keeping.