Review: Enchanted Garden Cross Stitch

Crafting and gardening seem to go together, and a lot of designers use flowers in their designs because they also enjoy growing them.

Gail Bussi is a cross stitch designer and an avid gardener, and she combined her two loves for a collection of outdoors-inspired patterns called Enchanted Garden Cross-Stitch.

The book includes 20 patterns featuring flowers, bird, butterflies and other images from backyard gardens, complete with words or quotes related to gardens, flowers and the outdoors.

For example a couple of the designs feature quotes from the book The Secret Garden, another has a quote from Maya Angelou, while others have lines like “flowers are happy things” and “heart of a rose,” which is shown on a heart-shaped design of flowers and an arbor.

The patterns use a lot of different colors (the fewest colors used in a pattern I could find were 12 or 13) and there’s a lot of detail that makes these patterns best suited to stitchers with some experience. Each chart is shown on a single page regardless of the size of the design, which means some of them are much smaller than others. That could be a problem for those with vision issues.

Also some of the colors used in the charts make it harder to read them. A few of the charts are shown with green as the background color, which can make it harder to see the stitches that are also green around them, or even to read the words in the design.

If you can get past those issues (by copying the image larger and in black and white, for instance) these are pretty designs and things that would be nice to stitch for flower-loving friends or for yourself.

The book also includes a recipe for carrot cupcakes, tips on making herbal tea and other tidbits from the garden.

Enchanted Garden Cross-Stitch is a lovely book with sweet designs worth taking the time to get over the hurdles of their presentation for.

About the book: 114 pages, paperback, 20 designs. Published 2023 by Stackpole Books. Suggested retail price $26.95.

As a knitter, I love a good sheep motif, so let’s take a look at some cute sheep cross stitch patterns.

If you want to stitch a little sheep, this mini square from Good Dog Needleworks is a nice choice. It uses just three colors and measures 32 by 32 stitches. That’s 2.2 inches or about 5.5 cm square if you stitch it on 14 count fabric.

I also love these two little sheep, which you can stitch together or in individual hoops and shown. The designs are form Threadbound Art and use six colors. They are slightly different in size, with one being 21 by 17 stitches and the other 21 by 20. They fit in four inch frames if you work them on 14 count fabric.

You can stitch a sweet sheep bookmark with this design from Kits by SA Stitch. This is not for the person who doesn’t like back stitch, because there’s a lot of that here, but it is really cute. It measures 30 by 91 stitches and uses 10 colors. That will make your bookmark about 2.4 by 6.5 inches, or 6 by 16.5 cm on 14 count fabric.

Stitch a pretty scene of sheep in a meadow with this design from Motok Nytok. It uses 21 colors and the design is 99 by 73 stitches. On 14 count fabric that makes it about 7.07 by 5.21 inches, or 17.96 by 13.24 cm.

This yarn full of cross stitch sheep has a bit of a knitting twist because the sheep all look like they have sweaters on. The design is from Soda Stitch Design and it measures 179 by 216 stitches. The full design uses 27 colors. On 14 count fabric it will work out to 12.78 by 15.42 inches, or 32.48 by 39.19 cm.

Another great one with a knitting theme is this one where the wool is coming off the sheep and straight onto the needles. This one is from Happy Cross Stitchers and uses 12 colors. The pattern is 137 by 137 stitches, which comes out to 9.7 inches or 24.86 cm square on 14 count fabric. This would be a fun one to stitch for the knitter in your life (even if that is you).

Or you can stitch the field of sheep of a knitter’s dreams with the Happy Sheep chart from Charts and Stuff. These per-colored sheep can be stitched as shown or worked in any colors you like. The eyes are French knots but you can just stitch them in white if you’d rather.

Have you read?