Hand Stitch Recognizable Summer Flowers – $12.99
Whether you are a novice or veteran stitcher, Summer Flowers will help you bring your vision to life. Beginning with backgrounds, you will learn how create the perfect setting for your idyllic tableau.
Then using just 10 familiar stitches, you will learn how to hand stitch 23 distinct and lovely plants and flowers.
Topics covered include printing photos on fabric to create beautiful layouts, ideas and instructions on how to make your project ready for framing, and step-by step demonstrations on how to bring it all together.
And there’s also Funtasy Flowers, where you can learn how to incorporate store-bought silk flowers into your own wonderful and unique creation.
Purchase Stitching Idyllic Summer Flowers Ebook!
Ann Bernard trained at the Royal School of Needlework and has a lifetime of stitching experience and tips to share. Her approach makes stitching fun with detailed directions and diagrams, even photos of both real and stitched plants, which guide you every step of the way.
I have also included a preview of the Hand Stitch Recognizable Summer Flowers Ebook that you may download in PDF format.
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I have added reviews that are from the Ebook.
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Ann’s sequel to her book “Stitching Idyllic Spring Flowers” carries on her embroidered garden to the summer flower varieties. The emphasis is very much on realistic colours and greenery to support each type of bloom. Ann’s detailed suggestions for floss colours and colour combinations reduce the experimenting needed for your garden plan.
For each flower variety, you get a photograph, then a line diagram to illustrate how the stitching should proceed, then a photograph of the stitched flower(s). This is the fundamental section of the book that embroiderers will turn to again and again.
This is a book for the creative embroiderer as there are many sample gardens to peruse but no “projects”. It is up to the reader to create her/his own garden – encouraged by Ann’s many examples and guidelines. Ann even has photos of her experimental “failures”, to illustrate the pitfalls of certain techniques.
Along with the flowers, Ann has excellent advice for preparing your background fabric and for supporting the fabric while stitching. The section on thread and needle sizes removes the guesswork about which needles to use.
Ann has added a new section about incorporating parts of silk flowers into embroideries which have flowers with large petals. This gives the garden a bit of a three dimensional feel.
It is clear that Ann knows and loves her garden flowers. Her embroidery expertise is also clear throughout the book.
Judy McMullan,
Past President, Canadian Embroiderers’ Guild, Guelph
It has been many years since the urge to get back to embroidery has come to my mind. There was a time when embroidery and the teaching of it engaged me completely but that seems long ago now. The intervening years have set me on quite a different path; I was, for 18 years, proprietor of The Textile Conservancy. This book, I am delighted to say, really does invite me back to stitching and allows me to include my other great passion, garden flowers. On cold wintery days, who could ask for more pleasure than that?
In her approach to this, her second book, Ann Bernard has taken a path which allows the new embroiderer scope to understand the especially necessary basics and at the same time to create a very satisfying result from the outset. From the perspective of her own experience, Ann emphasizes the value of good materials, careful preparation and practical experimenting, much the way you would when you paint a wall – the smoother and more meticulous the preparation, the better and more gratifying the results. As an embroiderer and particularly as a former textile conservator, I applaud her for this.
However, once she has covered these essential elements, Ann’s path widens and you begin to understand the real scope of this book. The challenges of creating a garden on fabric are much like the challenges of creating one in nature; you can have a wider vision, but the devil is in the detail. And it is in her attention to this detail that Ann invites us to discover the beauty of it all, not in grandeur but in miniature. She pares complexity down into simplicity in all the techniques and suggests avenues to creativity born of her own wide experience as a stitcher and as a teacher including, as well, that of her students and fellow embroiderers. In detailing the embroidering and test-running of the works featured in this book, Ann explains in no uncertain terms what worked and what didn’t, courageously pointing out that failure is as good a lesson as success.
The illustrations and colour plates in this book are lovely and especially good are those in the sections which demonstrate the transition from photograph, to design, to fibre art work. Techniques using technology for development and treatment of the ground fabrics are easy to understand and well presented within these images. The small size of the finished works is most useful in focussing on the many different effects of these techniques in enhancing the stories of the actual embroideries.
It was the pondering on the complexities of the more large-leafed and large-petalled flowers of the summer garden that led Ann and her fellow embroiderers to the experimenting and development of the technique she calls ‘silk flower conversion’. It may be useful to point out that ‘silk’ flowers are better known in North America as ‘artificial’ flowers. Real silk flowers, while still available at great cost, are definitely not required here. Once Ann and her colleagues had reached their original goal of re-creating these real flowers through textiles and stitching, they launched out into ‘funtasy flowers’ and suggested playful new directions for the technique. It was fun just to read about this ‘innovation’ and even more fun to consider its possibilities!!
Hand Stitching Recognizable Summer Flowers is like a fine cookery book in many ways, meant to be read and savoured before you put on an apron. It is filled with a huge variety of flower detail and would be as at home in the Gardening section as it is in the Embroidery one. As with any good cook book, each recipe/section provides the ingredients for success and tells you what to do next and how to present the plate. Skip one step and the dish won’t be as good – take note of all the special details, add your own creative juices and you will enjoy making it again and again.
Joyce Taylor Dawson M.A, Ph.D. (Textile History)
Dundas, Ontario
Grace Lister is an experienced embroiderer and teacher. She has City and Guilds Parts 1 and 2 qualifications.
She has contributed projects to the magazine Stitch and to DMC Book of Cross Stitch and Counted Thread Work.
She runs an embroidery class in the small town where she lives, near Glastonbury and Wells in Somerset, UK.
January, 2015
This book is an excellent continuation of the subject of Ann Bernard’s first book. I was greatly impressed by the first part of the book which gives full instruction on the setting up and organisation of your project. Help is given on how to create a background for your picture and new ways of forming a background are described and advice given on some of these innovative ideas. Instruction is given on the choice of fabrics, threads and the choosing of stitches. In fact, a very useful suggestion is the creation of a stitch sampler to be worked before proceeding with the project itself. The reader is encouraged to use personal creativity to plan their own garden scene and to study the plant families they intend to use before any stitching is worked.
In the latter part of the book many garden embroidery plans are introduced with very detailed advice on the threads and stitches to use. These are very helpfully grouped as families of plants are embroidered in a greater variety of stitches than is usually the case with these type of embroideries. I noticed particularly the lack of the ubiquitous Satin and Long and Short Stitch which are usually advocated as being suitable for flowers. This will be welcomed by many embroiderers I am sure. A section is also devoted to Silk Flower Conversion which adds another dimension to this book. This technique is not familiar to me. Is it new?
This book will be helpful to the beginner and more experienced worker alike. The diagrams, colour photos and text are clear and precise and the projects shown varied and interesting.
I look forward to Ann’s next book with great interest.
Grace Lister
I read your book with close attention as I have been stitching for many years. Your introduction/overview is lovely. I especially liked your urging to be creative beyond what is taught in the book.
The preparation of background fabric is especially helpful and I realize how important it is. As one who considers herself as a “techno klutz” this section bears further reading. You have given lots of practical tips all throughout the book. The description of the Enhanced Chain stitch is new to me and useful.
Silk Flowers Conversion and Funtasy Flowers are a surprise but an interesting addition to textile arts. And I liked the ‘conversational’ style of presenting your material. It made me think that you are sitting right here beside me.
Judy Castle,
Past President of the Canadian Embroiders’ Guild, London Ontario
Ann Johnson, embroiderer for almost 60 years, mostly self taught.
My interests run the gamut from the simplest forms of embroidery, embroidery from around the world, and more complex techniques in the form of goldwork.
Ann lives near Portland, Maine
Ann’s introduction is an in-depth look at her creative process right from the start. Her desire to have these summer flowers true to nature, but using simplified stitches is clearly stated and admirable.
Information on fabric preparation is extensive and very useful. Ann’s example for using each process and type of fabric will help beginner and expert alike and her frank comments on each process are refreshing. The fabric preparation and instructions for mounting fabric are a revelation. Ideas abound for supporting your embroidery, whichever final mounting method you choose.
Stitch diagrams and uses of each stitch offer a wealth of information and are a great starting point for experimentation. The simplicity of the way in which the stitches are used will encourage all would-be and experienced embroiderers alike. The idea of using a very open green Cretan stitch before embroidering borders is an inspiration. Beautifully rendered flowers are obtained by using easy stitches, attention to placement, and balance of colours. The pictures of real flowers followed by embroidered ones give good flow, showing how the embroidery is done with such lovely effect.
Simplicity and ease of stitching are the underpinnings of this excellent work. I recommend this lovely, detailed, and beautifully arranged ebook very highly.
Ann Johnson
As a relatively new stitcher I am encouraged and inspired to try the simple techniques presented in this book. The explanations are clear and the suggestions encourage me to consider ways of using these ideas and then expanding on them.
The stitches used are basic and often simplified. I could imagine using a variety of thread types to further embellish the ideas. The illustrations are clear and allow the stitcher to experiment using different backgrounds. Once starting to read suggestions I found myself making notes to extrapolate what I was reading.
Altogether this book encourages me to expand my thinking within the realm of traditional floral embroidery and yet it is a good starting point for anyone to try producing a realistic summer garden.
Mavis Brown
President, Canadian Embroiderers’ Guild, Guelph
I am really impressed by this new ebook on Summer Flowers by Ann Bernard.
The text is easy to follow, and the hints very helpful. The illustrations are good and the step by step instructions are clear. The illustration where Ann has changed the shade of just one delphinium to make a difference to the overall picture is really explicit. I like the use of the photo print backgrounds which serve to prove how important it is to have a taut working surface. (The workers of double sided embroidery in Asia have drum tight silk for their embroideries and look at what they achieve!)
New, to me anyway, the technique of Silk Flower Conversion looks as if it is fun to do and Funtasy Flowers is equally so.
Well done Ann, the book is an inspiration and I look forward to seeing your third book, whatever the subject, in due course.
Pam Wallis
The Embroiderers’ Guild UK
While the title may leave the impression this book is for advanced stitchers, this is a practical work book for all fabric artists. It is for beginners and for those already involved in design. Layout and stitching is a logical process from start to finish. The chapters on fabric preparation and framing are most detailed. The author’s stitch selections surprise, but they work. From end to end, a first-rate contribution to the art of stitching.
Mary Lunney
Past President Toronto Guild of Stitchery