Book Review and giveaway: The Embroidered Garden by Kazuko Aoki

Today I have the pleasure of reviewing The Embroidered Garden: Stitching through the Seasons of a Flower Garden, a beautiful book by embroidery artist Kazuko Aoki. Overall, this book is a wonderful advanced addition to your embroidery library - if you are a beginner, this book is a great way to expand your skills and hone your attention to detail.

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This book review has been long in the making, as any of you who follow me on Instagram have seen. I am embarassed to say I received this book more than a year ago from the publisher, stitched up my project, then life took over and I never posted my review. Well, this is a beautiful book, so not another fall will go by without me posting my review!

What's in the book

As a gardener, Kazuko Aoki has created wonderfully organic designs incorporating the flowers that inspire her into each season - Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. There are 4 large wreath designs for each season, and 4 smaller band-size designs, as well as a series of small projects for each season - about 29 patterns total.

You will quickly learn that nothing in this book can be categorized as "easy", every line counts - and what looks simple has an underlying attention to detail that results in something quite extraordinary.

Here's a brief peek through the book:

Spring pattern

Garden diary project

Butterfly brooches

Summer wreath

Autumn wreath

Winter wreath

This tips and techniques section is very helpful - but you may need to whip out your magnifying glass - the pictures and text are teeny-tiny!

The pattern pages are very complex, and depending on the stitcher, somewhat overwhelming. They are scaled smaller than the finished project, which will necessitate a trip to the copier. My approach to the patterns was to use them as a general guide to stitches and color, but not to follow them too religiously.

My Project

Tip: If you trace directly over the wreath pattern image it will fit perfectly into an 8 inch embroidery hoop.

I had a wedding to go to, and I wanted to have a present that was unique and extraordinary - I found just that in the Winter Wreath pattern.

Although the pattern was undeniably gorgeous as is, I really wanted to approach this in a unique way, and tailor the project to the bride's wedding colors, which were navy blue and gold.

I was very fortunate to find some beautiful navy blue linen in my mother's fabric stash, and chose that as my background. Of course the dark fabric produced a series of challenges - I initially used white carbon paper to transfer the image, and yellow chalk pencil to refine the lines.

When those lines faded, I traced the image, and stitched directly onto the tracing paper:

Both techniques worked well, and both had their drawbacks - my advice if you are stitching on dark fabric is to be open to trying out a new technique, and see what works best for you!

I used as many types of floss as I could handle for my piece:

6 strand DMC embroidery floss, vintage floss, gold metallic floss and thread, white DMC pearlescent effects floss, and rayon floss. Everything worked out really well and added to the overall sheen of the piece.

What I loved about this project was all the new things I learned - like using split stitch to fill an entire shape. I had never thought of doing that before, and I loved the organic texture it created. I also found myself relying on (and developing) my drawing and tracing skills. Visit my personal blog if you'd like to see even more process photos!

In patterns as complex as these, you must ultimately accept that reproducing it exactly is neither possible nor advisable - the magic of these patterns is what you bring to them yourself.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to lovers of Japanese craft books, and stitchers looking for an added challenge, but there are projects suitable for beginners as well.

Giveaway!

I enjoyed this book so much that we are doing a giveaway from our own small funds, so I will need to limit the giveaway to US only - so sorry!

Please leave a comment on this post to enter - and tell me - what is your favorite season and why? I'll leave comments open through Saturday, October 7, when I'll choose one random winner!

Edit: 10/9/17 - We have our winner! Sarah posted the random winning comment, please see below! Thank you all for joining in! :)