Here I go with small clothes again. So hard to resist. Apart from the cuteness appeal, they are also a small canvas, which makes for quick results, and who doesn’t like that?
Another little chambray shirt puts me in mind of the country. And French knots? Sheep! A match made in embellishment heaven!
I’ve seen little sheep made from French knots, but haven’t tried them myself, so a practice was definitely in order for this project to determine scale, number of wraps, and suitability of various threads.
Sheep are woolly, so my first choice for thread was something from the sheep’s back. A quick dive into my stash found some Appletons Crewel Wool, in shade number 882, from their Whites and Creams. For the grass, I chose an unlabelled green, probably shade number 253, from the Grass Green selection. I don’t have any black crewel wool for their heads and legs, so I started working with an 8-ply acrylic, which I unravelled to give me a similar gauge thread.
After a few attempts, I settled on 10 French knots per sheep, plus one for the head, and little stitches for the legs and grass. To maintain even sizes for my flock, I measured out a template, which I then transferred to a piece of plastic packaging on its way to the recycling bin.
From these tests, I found that the unravelled 8-ply was too fragile to use in this way, as it pulled apart when making the stitches. I tried to purchase some Appletons Crew Wool in black from my local craft store, but they were out of stock, so I decided to go with DMC Perle #3 in black, shade number 310, which I had on hand.
After roughly pinning where I wanted to sew my sheep, I marked the centre point of each pocket and used the template and an air-fading marker to outline my sheep shapes. I also marked each collar point, as well as a secret sheep on the collar stand.
On one side of the collar, I secured a loose thread end before stitching the sheep, When I came to this spot, the marker had already faded. I suspect it was due to the handling of the collar point while I worked on the thread end.
I worked 6 sheep bodies in the cream crewel wool, with 10 French knots of 2 wraps each.
Then came their heads and legs, one French knot of 2 wraps and 2 small stitches for the leg in the Perle # 3. The thread was secured with a single knot at the beginning and a few small back stitches at the end.
A line of random running stitches were then sewn under the sheep in green crewel wool for their grass.
Finally, the secret sheep was sewn on the collar stand at the centre back, because who doesn’t like a special secret to share.
This project was reasonably straight forward, with just a few tweaks along the way. I’m not sure if the black wool would have been sturdy enough for laundering if I had persisted with it for the heads and legs, and I’m happy with the way the Perle thread looks in the finished sheep.
The French knot is a simple stitch, but not necessarily an easy stitch, so if you are new to it, it is worth taking the time to practice getting tension and spacing as you want them. I spent almost as long testing, then practicing my sheep, as I did sewing them on the shirt, probably about 2 hours total.
The materials used were Appletons Crew Wool in shade 882 for the sheep body, probably shade 253 for the grass, and DMC Perle #3 in 310 for the heads and legs. The wool was found in a thrift shop, as was the shirt. The Perle thread was purchased from a craft supplier on eBay. Equipment included a chenille needle, scissors, ruler, tape measure, pins, air-fading marker, a hole-punch and a piece of plastic packaging that hadn’t quite made it to the recycling bin.
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