Isn't this a lovely picture -
I saw it in "Country Life" magazine. It's called "The Old Farm Garden" and is a recent donation to the Courtauld Insititute in London and is the work of a Victorian water colourist, Frederick Walker.
I love these Victorian garden pictures and used them as a reference when I was teaching embroidery. I love the little black cat in the picture, just like my late cat Frank who is buried in my garden in a pride of place in the middle of the lawn. Even when the garden was being made over, Frank's grave was sacrosanct.
My garden isn't looking so wonderful at the moment because of building works but the apple blossom and the scented clematis are out, so I took a few pictures away from the disturbance. You will notice that Bella has managed to get into the picture, just like the little cat in the painting!
It's all rather a symphony in green but in a few weeks my wonderful pink poppies will be out and I promise you another picture!
Now we have dealt with reality let's go back to a dream - this is a garden I did for a day school I taught at an Embroiderer's Guild Branch. It is worked on 18 to the inch canvas which gives you scope to use lots of different thread types. It is of course an idealised cottage garden though I tried hard to depict flowers and shrubs that are out at the same time in Spring -
Sorry about the picture being slightly skew-whiff, I'm not very good with the camera. Oh and that's Frank. I tried to put him in all my house and garden embroideries as he was such a good focus point!
I saw it in "Country Life" magazine. It's called "The Old Farm Garden" and is a recent donation to the Courtauld Insititute in London and is the work of a Victorian water colourist, Frederick Walker.
I love these Victorian garden pictures and used them as a reference when I was teaching embroidery. I love the little black cat in the picture, just like my late cat Frank who is buried in my garden in a pride of place in the middle of the lawn. Even when the garden was being made over, Frank's grave was sacrosanct.
My garden isn't looking so wonderful at the moment because of building works but the apple blossom and the scented clematis are out, so I took a few pictures away from the disturbance. You will notice that Bella has managed to get into the picture, just like the little cat in the painting!
It's all rather a symphony in green but in a few weeks my wonderful pink poppies will be out and I promise you another picture!
Now we have dealt with reality let's go back to a dream - this is a garden I did for a day school I taught at an Embroiderer's Guild Branch. It is worked on 18 to the inch canvas which gives you scope to use lots of different thread types. It is of course an idealised cottage garden though I tried hard to depict flowers and shrubs that are out at the same time in Spring -
Sorry about the picture being slightly skew-whiff, I'm not very good with the camera. Oh and that's Frank. I tried to put him in all my house and garden embroideries as he was such a good focus point!
