Or is it the up the garden path? The last few weeks have again been taken up with lots of gardening, both the real and the stitched.
The stitched garden has radishes coming up, variegated green lazy daisy stitches, with little pinky coloured straight stitches.
The ribbon rose cabbages (spider’s web stitch) look very lush and healthy, there’s one tiny pulled little bit of ribbon that might have a caterpillar hidden underneath. They were deliberately done with twists in the ribbon, and uneven to make them look more realistic.
The cauliflowers are huge, with lovely creamy florets (French knots in perlé 5) with cast-on stitch leaves in a fine variegated perlé.
I decided to keep the path straight, to continue it using the same tent stitch almost to the bottom of the garden. It reminds me of the long, narrow garden we had years ago behind a Victorian semi, with the path to one side.
But it wasn’t our garden that had the beautiful veg, it was our neighbour’s. Oh, how I coveted his parsley. A foot wide mass, that never went to seed. I’ve tried many times over the years to grow it, without much success: it always goes to seed and self sets. But I do just about manage to keep enough growing through everything else to use the leaves for most of the year. And I like the effect of it softening other things growing. The flowers are so delicate, too.
The garden is still in soft colours at the moment, and in spite of all the rain we have had on and off in the last few weeks, the peonies are the best they have ever been. It looks beautiful, and is changing every day.
The last couple of weeks I’ve been working on the garden, both the real one and a stitched one. The stitched one is what we are doing at “In The Stitch Zone” with Alex Hall. Alex’s garden is one she worked to go on a tag last July / August (take a look at her blog http://underatopazsky).
Mine is not so tiny. We started last week with a path on our chosen fabric and our own method of stitching. Alex suggested various possibilities: satin stitch, french knots depending on the sort of path we wanted, straight or curved, regular or irregular. I chose a dark batik, to which I used tent stitch in the two perlé threads above to attach a tiny piece of canvas, a straight regular path to mimic a herring-bone block paving. It was very slow and hard work as the fabric is backed with calico in a hoop.
I decided to try working the patio area in my hand, slightly quicker and a little easier to stich. The threads, although both perlé 5, are a slightly different twist and thickness which gives more texture. It looks like garter stitch knitting with alternate rows going in the opposite direction. I then just caught it down with stab stitches around the edges to the backing fabric.
I haven’t found time yet to put in the rest of the path, but we started the courgette bed in week two: raised stem bands in a variegated perlé 5, with lazy daisy stitches in yellow at the one end and tiny leaves cut from a colour catcher.
It was a bit tricky to find the right shape as they all look different on a Google search. My courgette plants are only just coming through in the greenhouse this week, and the leaves are not the proper leaves yet (but at least I have got as far as planting them this year).
I tried drawing them, but found it was easier to cut them directly as they are so tiny. When I stitched them down, I put a tiny pleat where they join the stem. The stems were put in with stem stitch!
This is the finished courgette bed.
I’ve got one piece of the recycled canvas left, but haven’t yet decided how best to continue the path. They are all off-cuts from some other project that have been sprayed gold, so can’t easily be replicated.
This is where it has got to so far. I think mine will end up with some flowers as well as vegetables, but it will evolve as the sessions progress.
The garden has some lovely areas at the moment, as long as you don’t look too closely for the weeds. The colours are mainly a soft blue, pink, purple palette which becomes warm as the summer progresses. The Aquilega (Granny’s Bonnets) are beautiful at the moment.
And this rose is spectacular, it’s one that Sally bought me after my dad died. It’s the best it’s ever been and loads of buds still to come out. It is also scented, so I’ll cut one for the kitchen table.
These poppies are stunning too, I can see them right down the garden when I open the bedroom blind in the morning, loads more buds on this too.
The wisteria is almost at its best too, not that this photo does it credit. The spires are longer than they have ever been, several inches at the bottom still to open. We have managed a few meals under it, but so far I’ve not got as far as using the hammock because it hasn’t been warm enough by the time I’ve done all the things I’ve needed to do. Next warm day, it must be a priority as the flowers don’t last, but the jobs don’t go away.
debbidipity 