Kazuko AokiThe Embroidered Garden: Stitching through the Seasons of a Flower Garden (Make Good: Japanese Craft Style)

Passt

I collect needlework books and don't know if I more like the old classics or brand new books like this that may be bound to become a classic. Very many books are being published by Japanese designers recently and their perspective adds a different dimension to our Western ways. Omigosh! I just learned a new word: atelier. (I have a BA in English so I have no business not knowing this word!) It's first mentioned in the Introduction where author Kazuko Aoki relates that her first interest is her garden and from that stemmed her desire to capture its beauty in needlework. It's the ever-changing plants and flowers of the season that keep this endeavor always fresh."Atelier" means an artist's or designer's studio or workshop and Ms. Aoki encourages us to begin with a journal or diary of plants and flowers we like and translate them into potential drawings and then needlework designs. We are first presented with a pretty photo of her Garden Diary which is covered with embroidered linen with images of several plants, a spade, topiary, watering can, and garden boots. She says she began keeping this diary when she first started gardening and she uses it to reminisce on what she's done, to memorialize what she is currently doing and to make notes on what she would like to do in the future. She explains how to make this journal later on in the book. (A huge problem, though, is that she gives no clue about the pages of the journal. She doesn't talk about covering a printed book and I have no idea if all the pages are made of linen like the front and back cover where she practices stitches or if they're paper upon which she writes and draws. It's probably the latter but it's not good that she doesn't display the inside of the journal and the list of materials gives you no clue.)The book is very well laid out: she begins with Spring and each season is covered over 8 to 10 pages. Each season has a paragraph discussion of what flowers excite her for that season and pictures 7 embroidered flowers on the left-hand page and then a larger picture of a wreath of completely different flowers also of the season on the right-hand page. Spring and Summer also have a picture to stitch with a bunch of flowers together and every season has not only individual stitched pictures on linen but also cute projects like frogs or bugs on throw pillows or a linen-covered cork board with pockets for notes and letters and bands to hold other paper. You could also pin paper onto the board.She shows detailed photos of how she get inspiration from her garden and translates them into sometimes 3-D designs. (Again, though, she shows a bunch of butterflies with raised wings and I can't tell if that's stumpwork or not. The whole back of the book is the patterns for all the projects which could have been improved if they weren't so fine and with quite small-font labels and directions.In her stitch "catalog" (as opposed to guide), she diagrams 19 different stitches: although they cover only two pages, they're remarkably easy-to-follow.The most unusual part of the book though is "Kazuko's Stitch Lessons" on pages 49-52. These begin with standard Material's and Tools; then Basic Techniques of transferring designs onto fabric and using a hoop; then Extra Techniques like how to use applique and needle felting; and finally Lessons on Finer Points like how best to make French knots, weaving stitch, and work with ribbon embroidery.The single best thing in the entire book to me is the "Secret Finishing Techniques" on page 51. The displays how she finishes framed pieces: sprays them with a very fine mist of water and uses a wet Q-tip to "fix" the stitches by carefully smoothing them down, gently enough not to make them fuzzy. She shows that this is the best way to make satin stitches be perfectly parallel and neaten all other stitches. Finally, if you have drawn the pattern onto the linen, the water will erase any errant marks.This book is in line with other recently published books and in combination, I think they'll be very useful to expand my vision of designing for myself or at least better stitching others' patterns: Rebecca Ringquist's Embroidery Workshops: A Bend-the-Rules Primer Secret Garden Embroidery: 15 Projects for Your Stitching Pleasure Shakespeare's Flowers in Stumpwork (Milner Craft Series)Rebecca Ringquist's Embroidery Workshops: A Bend-the-Rules PrimerSecret Garden Embroidery: 15 Projects for Your Stitching PleasureShakespeare's Flowers in Stumpwork (Milner Craft Series)

I have looked but not made anything yet, but the patterns are beautiful.

Perfeito!

I don't understand all the great reviews about detailed instructions. Perhaps they are from people who haven't actually attempted to follow them? The book is gorgeous, the patterns are beautiful and I was eager to do some. And that's where it stopped being so fun. The ones I really wanted to do call for Kazuko Aoki linen floss, which is not available in the US as far as I could tell. OK, I'm weird about following patterns precisely, but the book suggests using DMC linen floss instead (no colors given), but that's been discontinued. Fine, I just picked the next best pattern . . . and I needed to enlarge it. Annoying, but, OK. The materials list is not in numeric order, eh, nitpicky, but still kind of annoying to deal with when gathering/buying supplies, but I do realize that is probably more my issue than the book's. Then, when I finally was able to stitch, (fyi, the #5 threads used are not colors widely available in craft stores and need to be ordered) I discovered how much of a pain the directions really are. The lines for colors are sometimes missing, sometimes wrong and sometimes they aren't really clear as to what exactly goes where and how close stitches the should be to each other (flower buds in particular) without flipping back to the beginning of the book to look at the picture. All things someone can certainly deal with, but, really, if I wanted to deal with all of the annoyances, I'd make my own patterns.