As part of the stitch-a-garden course Nicki Franklyn from The Stitchery has included little samplers of how to stitch different parts of the garden. I stitched a tree and shrub sampler earlier in the course…

It’s useful to see different ways of representing trees or shrubs and how to add some texture to the stitching.

I’m now working on a flower version. Nicki showed different stitches which could be used to create flowers, I’ve tried on the whole to make them like flowers in our garden. It was a useful exercise which has certainly broadened my repetoire of flower stitches, it’s very easy to just use a few easy ones, such as French knots, chain stitch or straight stitch, stitching this sampler is making me think of other ways to give the effect.

I’m stitching on one of the lovely linens I got in a ‘treasure’ pack from Sookie Soo, I like the texture of these fabrics. I started by stitching the outline to make twelve boxes, then I just started concentrating on one stitch for each block, the squares are just under 2×2″. Nicki uses an old fashioned typewriter to write ‘labels’, I did originally plan to have the writing on little pieces of fabric to stitch on, but I couldn’t get it to look right. In the end I just wrote on the square as neatly as I could in a sepia coloured finepoint pen. I still haven’t decided whether to stitch over the title square.

This is the row I’m working on at the moment. I particularly liked the woven wheels and the stem stitch flowers. I’ve not come across stem stitch flowers before but they’re much quicker than bullion knots and really effective. As you can see I’ve a few more bullion knots to do, I’ll do some straight too a bit like veronicas or liatris.

I’ve then got one more row to do, there’s a couple of ways using applique and I thought I might do some raised picot stich, unless someone thinks of another stitch to try.