I’ve been busy stitching over the last week, just haven’t quite got round to writing about it. I’ve stitched another couple of little embroideries for my garden book. These are both from the mystery bundle I bought from Soukie Soo, she draws pretty little designs onto vintage linen with a heat erasable pen which is perfect for me as if I want to change something or a design is not to my liking, I can just iron it!

Here’s three I stitched earlier…

My plan is to use these in crazy quilting pages or simple textile pages so I’m trying to link them to my garden. Last week I stitched a garden gate. We have a gate in between the patio and the rest of the garden, mainly to keep the dogs off the main garden. It opened against a billowing large geranium with deep magenta flowers…

I painted the gate after I had stitched the outline and the sides, probably not the best order but I used aloe vera gel to stop the paint from bleeding and I seem to have got away with it. I painted the background with some green watercolour which was useful practise for my main garden embroidery – more of that on Sunday.

In the front garden we have an abies Korean, a tall rather spindly fir tree which has the most amazing purple fir ones, so this is what the fir tree design has become with a few (rather too many maybe!) purple French knots. I’ve just realised when photographing it that I still need to stitch a bit of earth and grass for it to stand on.

I also received in the post a lovely bundle of linens from Sookie Soo, it’s a mystery bundle of vintage linens of varying weights and sizes, the smallest is A5 size, up to A4, fifteen different pieces. They’ll be great for little embroideries as they have a lovely texture to them. They’re all white but they will take dye or paint. I think they will be perfect for my garden book.

I’ve still a long way to go with my garden book but I think I might start putting some of these little embroideries onto a page, otherwise it could be quite daunting at the end!