I’ve finished another page for my garden book, this one is made from two of the little embroideries I did, one is of a standard rose we have called Roald Dahl and the other is a length of roses to show the climbing rose called Teasing Georgia. I bought the Roald Dahl one in memory of my mum as she was a primary school teacher and one of her favourite books to read to the children was Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. This is the book that influenced the colour of the rose when David Austins decided to name one of their roses after him.

This page ended up a little tight on space as neither were really big enough to have a page to themselves but there wasn’t much room for filler stitching. In the end I just trimmed them fairly close and stitched them onto the background fabric with running stitch and blanket stitch.

The wording was written by hand using a frixion pen but as it’s a coarse linen (from an old furnishing fabric sample book) I could follow the lines which made it easy to get a neat effect. My main problem with this bit was trying not to make it fray whilst I stitched it on.

I’m particularly pleased with my bee, I had a fat quarter of honeycomb fabric so I cut a small square and rather than just stitching round I suddenly had the idea to extend the honeycomb pattern onto the background. I then drew a bee using a frixion pen and stitched it. I’ve just realised he’s legless, so I might add a few legs!!

I think I’ve only one or two of these pages to stitch from the little embroideries. I’ve still got a map of the garden to create and one more big one to do, the amber and amethyst garden. I’m getting there!