Hands to work, hearts to God: 1 – a small cross stitch project from Little House Needleworks

I’ve been hunting for a nice cross stitch version of the phrase ‘Hands to work, hearts to God’ for ages. Recently, I came across this one from Little House Needleworks. It’s a chart (not a full kit), and I bought mine from Peakside Needleworks in the UK. It’s about seven inches square when completed.

As this is a small chart, I thought I’d raid my stash for suitable colours, as I wouldn’t need much of anything to be able to complete this. I used mainly Silk ‘n’ Colors and Cascade House threads. I chose Zweigart 28 count ‘Platinum’ shade for the fabric.

This is how I work from a black and white symbol chart. I colour in the squares in very obvious colours (not necessarily realistic ones) so that it is easy to see shade differences between colours that are next to each other. I also stick pieces of the actual thread next to each symbol on the colour key, as a reminder of which thread to use, as well as writing the thread name on (especially when I am substituting colours).

It’s a lovely early American ‘naive’ design, which doesn’t take long to stitch. Those little black and white blobs are surprisingly effective sheep!

This took just a week – and it’s ALMOST complete! Just a little bit more of the bottom border to do.

So, the next bit to do is to mount it – and this time, I want to make a ‘stand-up’ rather than frame it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Advertisement