The Art of Embroidered Flowers

The content goes far beyond the title. Baron’s book, first published in Great Britain in 2004, features flowers in embroidery, but also in painting, resist dyeing, collage, and other techniques. What she reveals is how to create elegant pictures that just happen to include thread. Her directions do occasionally meander, but at her work’s center are three designs—Summer Meadow, Buttercup Field, and Flowers by the Fence—with step-by-step, color-photograph instructions for every part of the process, from dyeing the background to selecting a frame. She mixes techniques in with her designs, looking at machine embroidery, sponging and masking, and a variety of resists (bubble wrap, for one). It’s a small tome, but one filled with big ideas and wall-to-wall examples of Baron’s art, whether the process of hand dyeing or finished fields of blooms.

-- Barbara Jacobs * Booklist *

September 2017

If you're ready to take embroidery to the next level, pick up this book, which asks you to use it as a creative springboard for your own artwork. It provides you with all the techniques and knowledge you'll need, but what you produce will be all yours.

* Sew *

Search Press Classics is a series of their books which have stood the test of time and gone the whole nine yards in providing inspiration and instruction.  Originally published in 2004 this book shows what can be done with a very basic sewing machine, scraps of cloth, a few simple stitches and some fabric paint.

 

I have loved this book since it first came out, as it shows how you can do a lot with a little and have fun in the process.  Recycle even tiny pieces of cloth and anything else you have to hand into some truly beautiful pictures. If you already do some type of sewing you will have nearly everything you need, as apart from the basics you only require fabric paint, plain fabric (I mostly use calico) and various threads.  There are a few pages about using photographs or sketches for inspiration, and how to do the background painting.  You can also space dye your own threads and learn a few simple hand embroidery stitches.  The rest of the book contains projects and ideas to take the basic idea further and make greetings cards, decorative paper mounts and expand into panoramic scenes.  This is not a book of flower portraits but glorious landscapes showing fields of poppies and buttercups, meadows, gardens and other colorful scenes.  Learn how to use a sewing machine’s most basic stitch and adorn the foreground with a mixture of hand embroidery and flowers made from tiny scraps of fabric.  You can also embroider on paper or card, and to inspire you further there are examples of the author’s other finished works.  Simple and fun to do it shows you how you don’t need to buy the craft shop in order to make something beautiful and is a great way of using up leftovers from larger projects

* Myshelf.com *

This is a re-issue of the late Gilda Baron’s popular book, in the new Classics series.  Using painted or dyed backgrounds with machine and hand embroidery and applique, and by following Gilda’s meticulous instructions, colourful interpretations of landscapes and gardens can be created.  Three step-by-step projects are included with many suggestions for taking the techniques further, and a gallery of Gilda’s completed works provide further inspiration.  This gloriously colourful book is a must-have for any embroiderer’s bookshelf.

* East Kent Embroiderers Gui