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Sampler Garden



Most of my flower designs have been rows of flowers.  I have many individual flowers I've charted over time but I hadn't figured out how to put them into a sampler design.

At the same time my new patio had was finished.  The soil here is not ideal for gardening so I was out shopping for pots so I could set them on the patio and do some container gardening.  It is amazing how many pots there are available - they come in all colors, sizes and shapes.

Finally, I managed to connect the two.  I could put my cross-stitch flowers into pots.  Taking a queue from antique samplers, I don't need to get the scale right or even have the flowers look realistic.

Actually, the middle flower is quite realistic.  It is a called a Kashmir Sage (phlomis cashmeriana) and does rather well in my small real garden.  It grows several feet tall.  The design is the top few inches of the plant and I put it in the equivalent of a shot glass.  It almost looks like an alien plant and is right at home on a sampler. 

The other two flowers are highly stylized versions of a wallflower and a skyrocket gilia.  They are so stylized they no longer resemble the individual flower, but they look good with the Kashmir Sage.  They look so different, I didn't even feel obligated to retain their normal coloring. 

All I had to do was make some funky containers for the flowers, add words and I was ready to start stitching.  As I stitched I was able to imagine many other "gardens".
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