Unique St. Patrick’s Day Cross Stitch Patterns

I’ve been sharing a lot of specific sets of St. Patrick’s Day cross stitch patterns lately (to recap, there have been shamrocks and leprechauns and funny St. Patrick’s Day cross stitch patterns). This collection is full of patterns that I found really interesting for various reasons but don’t have a good way to classify them.

Thus, they are just unique St. Patrick’s Day cross stitch patterns.

If you’re looking for a bit of a challenge, something that doesn’t look like all the other St. Patrick’s Day patterns out there, try these on for size.

I thought this kaleidoscope cross stitch pattern from crossstitch.com was interesting. It starts out with regular shamrocks at the corners, but in the center it is a bunch of stars in different shades of green, as if you’d twisted a picture of shamrocks in a kaleidoscope.

The pattern uses 30 colors and is 151 by 155 stitches, or about 10.8 by 11.1 inches when stitched on 14 count fabric. To make it a little easier on yourself but still cool looking, you could try stitching the stars with variegated thread instead of changing colors so often.

If you like the look of a sampler with repeating patterns, this one with an Irish twist might be of interest to you. This pattern from Sam X Stitch on Etsy features bands of repeating patterns including shamrocks, pots of gold and glasses of beer (which you could make green if you want to be cheeky).

It uses nine colors and the design area is 139 stitches square. It’s almost 10 inches when stitched on 14 count fabric.

How about some pretty Irish quilt blocks? These can be stitched as a sampler as shown or you can make them as individual patterns. The blocks include

Shamrocks
Claddagh
Blarney stone
St. Patrick
Celtic cross
Irish banner
Irish harp strings
Rainbow’s end
Saint Brigid

The pattern was designed by David Jackson and is available on Etsy from Celtic Craft Shop US.

Next Pattern:

45+ Free Disney Inspired Cross-Stitch Patterns

I recently shared a review of the book Lit Stitch, and in the lengthy introductory materials there were a few paragraphs — enough to warrant their own heading — about how, or more accurately, whether, to fix mistakes in your cross stitch.

The conclusion was that for the most part no one will notice if, for instance, you stitch the wrong color for a stitch or two in a project that has many colors all worked together.

“No one else will notice” is used as reasoning for not fixing mistakes in knitting, crochet and other crafts, too, and I think that’s valid, as long as you also don’t notice.

If you know enough about yourself to know that every time you wear a sweater or look at a finished cross stitch project your eye will be drawn to that errant purl stitch or the extra stitch, by all means, fix it. Especially in cross stitch, if the mistake is minor, it shouldn’t take long to fix and you’ll feel a lot better about your project.

Of course, there are also times other people might notice a mistake. Say you’re stitching letters and you add an extra stitch or two on one side so now the letter doesn’t match the others. Again, easy fix to remove those extra stitches, so go ahead and do it while you can.

I also subscribe to the rule from the drama that anything that can’t be seen from the seats doesn’t matter on stage. Maybe in a house it’s the six-foot rule. Stand as far away from your piece as you think a person is likely to be close to it when it’s on display. If you can’t see any mistakes, there aren’t any mistakes.

I’d love to hear how you deal with mistakes in your cross-stitching, or if you consider them mistakes at all!

[Photo: y x from Pixabay]

Get the book here: Lit Stitch