Little Sheep Virtues

Happy Friday! I'm pretty excited to be sharing this cross stitch project with you all.

Pattern: Little Sheep Virtues 1-12 by Little House Needleworks and Count Your Blessings by Country Cottage Needleworks

Linen: 36 Count Natural Belfast Linen from Kitten Stitcher

Thread: All the called for DMC plus 3722 and 3820

Final Measurements of the stitching: 14 by 14 inches

I first saw these patterns on Pinterest back in 2017 all stitched up together and it was just so lovely. I wanted to do something similar but I was looking for a different center pattern. I finally decided on the Count Your Blessings and knew that if I did a 4x4 square then the empty center spot would be a good fit for it.

I started the project on 30 count linen 1 over 2 in September of 2019 but I just wasn't liking the coverage. So I put it away and lost my stitchy bug for a long time. Enter Covid-19 and lockdown/layoff from work for 7 weeks and all of a sudden I had lots of time and not much to do. On April 21, 2020 I restarted the first block called Hope and I finished the last stitch on May 31st, 2020...

I made some changes to a few of the blocks as I went along:

• Block 2 - Love, I changed the 221 DMC to 3722 DMC. It's a pretty dusky pink and I think it worked better than christmas red for a love block. The little hearts on the bums of the sheep I did in the same neutral as block 3, 7 and 12

• Block 3 - Peace, I recharted a peace sign on the sheep bum

• Block 6 - Simplicity, I changed the 780 DMC to 3820 DMC. I wanted the sun to be more yellow

• Block 9 - Friendship I also used 3820 DMC for the flowers

• Block 11 - Gratitude, I used the 3722 DMC for the heart and the 3820 DMC for some of the leaves

• For the spacing of the blocks themselves, I wanted to keep them fairly close to each other so there is 1 empty stitch in between before I started the next one. Same with the rows below, 1 space.

• Count Your Blessings, I used the colour palette from the Virtues blocks and changed the house to 3820 DMC. I live in a yellow house, I like yellow houses :) I changed the fruit in the trees to 221 (they look like apples and we have an apple tree), I changed the flowers in the grass and the numbers to 3722 DMC because it just looked better. I made up my border to mimic the borders on the Virtues blocks. 

I kind of wished I had recharted the words to match the font on the Virtues blocks but I didn't... I may go back and redo that but I may just leave it. I'm also not totally sold on the Ecru used for the all the white with this linen colour. It doesn't stand out a lot, like the snowflake on the Hope block isn't a grabber like I wish it was. I am not going to redo all the Ecru though, no way! I'm on the lookout for a good frame for this one. I'm not sure if I'll get it professionally framed or try it myself. Maybe when Michaels has it's next sale I'll pick one up.

Over all I really love this piece. I had a great time stitching it mostly during #stitchmaynia as my #stitchsania piece a la Lindy Stitches. Each block was like having a new start and I loved how the colours played with each other even though I was messing with the order of things. It was also a meditation of sorts as I took in each word that I was working on, Hope, Love, Peace, Courage, Faith, Simplicity, Patience, Wisdom, Friendship, Kindness, Gratitude, Joyfulness and lastly Count Your Blessings. I couldn't have picked a better project to work on during this pandemic period.

Thanks for reading about my Little Sheep Virtues project. If you have questions that I didn't answer in this post leave a comment. And if you'd like to follow along with my progress on all things crafty head on over to my Instagram. I usually post there a few times a week.