How does your garden grow with stitch?

"How does your garden grow with stitch?" is an update on a post I published way back in 2015, when I stitched my first "impressionist garden" for a course I was studying at the Embroiderers' Guild.

Gardens are my constant inspiration for my artwork, and I create gardens in cloth and stitch repetitively, using many different techniques. I am particularly fond of this heavily stitched embroidered "impressionist" garden.

In 2016, I stitched two small gardens in this style for an exhibition and they included photos of my husband's grandmother and her brother and sister as children. Although the collector who bought these two works did not know our family, the children reminded him of his own family from England of about the same era. These two 'gardens' have become my "stitch" reference and images which best showcase the technique although I don't have the originals any more.

Since then, quite a few other gardens have grown, often to celebrate significant birthdays of family and friends ... pictured, one square in 2017, stitched as a contribution to a family quilt for my husband, and the other in 2018, for a friend's 80th birthday.

What prompted a recent return to these stitched gardens? Over the last few years, I have stitched a series called "Garden Threads" - a slow stitching abstract exploration of colour, using only basic stitches - running stitch and random cross stitch. This year, I started embroidery some "healing" flowers and really enjoyed the process of representing flowers in stitch again .

And like that, a new series was started this year, 2025 .... and just this last weekend, I shared the process with six lovely stitchers, who I think enjoyed the experience of stitching a garden too.

( Look for a future post about the workshop fun )

Link to the previous post about stitched gardens , including the colouring of the backgrounds with crayons .... How does your garden grow with crayons?

https://empresswu.blogspot.com/2015/04/how-does-your-garden-grow-with-crayons.html.

Comments

Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks .... The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or my husband or from off cuts gifted to us from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks. Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as w...

#the100dayproject : Inspiring Women Days 1 - 4

#The100DayProject is a *free* global art project that takes place online 🎨 E very year, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of creating. Anyone can participate . The idea is simple: choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and document and share the process online. 2026 is my 8th year of participating. I have stitched daily observations, painted my egg cup collection, collaged postcards and envelopes, written poems, explored colour palettes .... this year I am researching, sketching and stitching 100 inspiring women. Fortunately I purchased a piece of beautiful linen, with preprinted outlines of 100 women ... just one issue - the figures are tiny (height 6cm /2.5 ins) My first week started tentatively ... I thought I would start with Empress Wu, after whom I named my creative activity. This is when I discovered how difficult it is to applique and stitch on these very small figures - I used tweezers to put pieces of fabric down, tried t...

Lilly Pilly

Today is Australia Day. I chose a photo of some Lilly Pilly berries as a celebratory image for this national day. Lilly Pilly is a common name for a plant, Syzygium smithii which grows mostly in Eastern Australia, from the northern rain forests of Queensland, throughout NSW to the southern Wilson's Promontory in Victoria. In New Zealand it is called "monkey apple, but other names used in Australia, besides lilly pilly, are Eungella Gum and Coast Satinash. The largest Lilly Pilly recorded was found in Dingo Creek Flora Reserve, near Tenterfield where I once lived. The tree now growing in my garden was once a small seedling which I was gifted when I left Woolgoolga, a small coastal town in northern NSW. Its name is said to come from the Aboriginal word 'weelgoolga' describing the lilly pilly which grows in profusion there. It is probably no surprise that the lilly pilly berries are edible as bush tucker, and make a beautiful jam or jelly. I have even seen re...

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Search This Blog