Well I never did find the original design for this final piece for my garden book, it’ll turn up one day…in the meantime I redrew the map of our garden. I used Google maps as a basis of relative sizes within the area. It’s not perfectly accurate or properly to scale, but it gives the idea of where each area or feature lies in relation to the other areas.

It took me a while to work out how I was going to create this piece, I wanted it to be fairly clear and not too labour intensive. I decided on a four-patch pieced backing with applique shapes applied using bondaweb. Once I’ve finished the embroidery I’ll cut it out and mount it on a plain fabric page. This is where I’m at so far…

As you can see I’ve just done back-stitch round the applique and chain stitch where the walls are. I’ve just got the conservatory to stitch round, then I’m thinking of adding straight stitches where the steps are and a little symbol where the arches are.

I’m then planning to stitch numbers on each area or feature and then on the page opposite I’ll have the key.

Once I’ve cut the garden out and stitched it on to the page, I’ll probably do some minimal back stitch to indicate the road and the back lane.

After this page I’ve just three fairly simple pages to do and then I’ll start putting it all together, At the moment I’m thinking of a fairly stiff interfacing and then using a pretty binding to cover the outer edges. It will be a little bulky at the edges but that might be an advantage in protecting the raised stitches. Another idea (which I’ve just this second had!) would be to cut the back page a quarter inch bigger than the front page, I can then fold the extra over the edge and blanket-stitch down…that idea is growing on me!

I’ve a bit of time before I need to decide on my method, any thoughts welcome.

This stitch-a-long is organised by Avis, from stitching by the sea, please follow the links to see what every one else is stitching.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, 

Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, 

Daisy, Cathie, Linda, Helen, MaryMargaret, Cindy