Stitching by Ann Bernard
Lilian Henrikson, who created and stitched A Garden of Spring and Summer Flowers, posted the blog from this site to her own blog. To her delight, she received Comments for around the world.
Two extra flowers stitched by Lilian. On the left, Hollyhocks. To the right, Sunflowers.
Sheila McCoy, who is a well known embroiderer in Canada, has sent the previous blog to Inspirations. This is a magazine and weekly newsletter site in Australia. Thank you Sheila.
Remember, you saw it here first!
Here is an original piece of embroidery. There was no inspiration except for her imagination and the pencil drawing of her plan. Lilian Henrikson used all the flowers in both of my books, Hand Stitch Recognizable Spring and Summer Flowers, and, she included some she created herself. What was remarkable, was that Lilian never once asked for any guidance or interpretation of the instructions, which to me, meant that the instructions were complete. It is good to know that the books cover the subjects completely. It is also good to know that it is possible to create and add flowers of one’s own. You may not think that you would ever do that but Lilian did and, so can you! That is, if you wish to do so.
It started as a sampler trying out some spring flowers. You can see snowdrops, crocus, daffodils and narcissus here in small numbers plus a forsythia bush.
From there it grew to include groupings of flowers. Note that Lilian stitched lots of daffodils, many hyacinths in different colours and some primulas.
Here are the hyacinths again plus some tulips and iris. At the top, an unusual spring flower called Crown Imperial Fritillaria. It is tall and striking, and smells terrible.
Lilian moved on to summer flowers. Here are delphiniums, shasta daisies, several roses and orange cone flowers. Next to the holly bush (red) are asters, below is alyssum, the blue are gentian, the orange are cone flowers, the light blue are hydrangeas, and the pink are a feathery spike flower but the name is unknown
A close up of the portulaca which are my favourite in this garden. These are the first ones I have seen other than the ones included in the book. The colours of these flowers is vivid and different as is the stitching technique.
At the top left corner are hollyhocks and in the top right are sunflowers with lupins and peonies in between.
This is the completed Spring into Summer Garden. Lilian planned the pathway which makes the eye wander onwards. One should always pay attention to the scenery when walking through a real life garden.
It has been framed in dark green which sets it off nicely and does not detract from the embroidery. The glass protection reflects the lights and I was unable to get a satisfactory picture of it completed.
Here is Lilian who is obviously pleased with her achievement. And, she likes flowers -also obviously! She says she should have included a bunny somewhere!
This took many months to complete as Lilian is a busy person and mostly stitches for one afternoon a week. This is OK because I know that it took me many months to years to work out how to portray the 46 flowers, bushes and trees.included in both books. She comments that the project was fun and that she never got bored with repetition. Stitching kits can be really boring because of repetition. Quantities of repetition. It is not you, it is a fact of life and of kits.
Would you like to purchase a copy of both Spring and Summer Flowers ebooks at half price? Post a comment to this blog entry and see what happens.
The next blog will be a close up look at the contents of my two books. The half price offer will be included. It will be in time for you to consider this for a seasonal gift to yourself or someone else who enjoys stitching.