Crafting and gardening seem to go together, and a lot of designers use flowers in their designs because they also enjoy growing them.
Gail Bussi is a cross stitch designer and an avid gardener, and she combined her two loves for a collection of outdoors-inspired patterns called Enchanted Garden Cross-Stitch.
The book includes 20 patterns featuring flowers, bird, butterflies and other images from backyard gardens, complete with words or quotes related to gardens, flowers and the outdoors.
For example a couple of the designs feature quotes from the book The Secret Garden, another has a quote from Maya Angelou, while others have lines like “flowers are happy things” and “heart of a rose,” which is shown on a heart-shaped design of flowers and an arbor.
The patterns use a lot of different colors (the fewest colors used in a pattern I could find were 12 or 13) and there’s a lot of detail that makes these patterns best suited to stitchers with some experience. Each chart is shown on a single page regardless of the size of the design, which means some of them are much smaller than others. That could be a problem for those with vision issues.
Also some of the colors used in the charts make it harder to read them. A few of the charts are shown with green as the background color, which can make it harder to see the stitches that are also green around them, or even to read the words in the design.
If you can get past those issues (by copying the image larger and in black and white, for instance) these are pretty designs and things that would be nice to stitch for flower-loving friends or for yourself.
The book also includes a recipe for carrot cupcakes, tips on making herbal tea and other tidbits from the garden.
Enchanted Garden Cross-Stitch is a lovely book with sweet designs worth taking the time to get over the hurdles of their presentation for.
About the book: 114 pages, paperback, 20 designs. Published 2023 by Stackpole Books. Suggested retail price $26.95.
