One of my bigger projects (time wise!) is a textile book of our garden. Nicky from The Stitchery is running a SAL with videos and instructions on how to stitch a garden, it’s meant to be a picture but as our wall space is pretty full I decided to make a textile book instead. I’m hoping to do different pages for the different areas of the garden plus features.

Three weeks ago when I last shared my progress I’d just picked up a design by Soukie Soo which I started some time ago and it sort of fell by the wayside. I follow Soukie Soo on Instagram and if you like one of her designs she draws it out for you on metis in what I presume is a frixion pen as it disappears on ironing. I thought this would would fit in nicely with the garden book.

I was stitching the words with satin stitch…

The next day I took it along to my Skipton Stitchers meeting and cracked on with it. I completed the words later that week, I’m pretty pleased with the letters although I think another time I’d try split stitch or stem stitch instead to try and make the edges neater.

With the words stitched I started embroidering the flowers. I decided on orange roses and purple filler flowers, just like I have in my Amber & Amethyst garden. I used three shades of orange thread to make the bullion knots of the roses. I decided roses are a bit like buttonholes, there’s always one that’s a bit iffy! The leaves are stitched with fishtail stitch which is now my favourite for leaves. The buds are stitched with French knots and fly stitch.

With the main embroidery complete I just had the border of split stitch and a simple running stitch to do. Once it was pressed any visible design lines disappeared. I’m pleased with this piece and it’s a nice size at 6″ by 7″ plus a border to aim for the finished size of the book pages.

This SAL is organised by Avis, we post our progress on a project every three weeks, just often enough to keep the motivation going. Please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen, Connie