This book looks gorgeous, and as an inspirational title I cant fault it.
My only problem? When would I ever need to embroider an aubergine? When would I have the time?

Cute examples of garden themed embroidery lots of fruit, veggies, and a few critters! The good: the book has color pictures of all the designs, and a stitch glossary where you can see how to do each one. The back of the book has the true to size pattern for you to trace or copy over to your blank. These are great images that have lots of household uses.

I would have liked to see examples of the designs decorating items like a reusable grocery bag, kitchen towel and have a few project ideas included. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for a digital ARC to review.

A book for the intermediate embroiderer or the ambitious beginner that is full of sweet designs inspired by a cardboard box of colorful vegetables.

A very pretty embroidery book featuring designs for an extensive range of vegetables. Additionally, there are designs for edible flowers and some insects and birds.
Each design has a full page colour photograph and an outline drawing for the design, indicating the stitches to be used. Unfortunately, the embroidering scheme is in a separate section to the colour photograph, at the back of the book. It would have been better if the two were together. Also there are no close up photographs to show more details of the stitching, which is a pity.
These are designs only and there are no suggested projects. It's up to you to decide how you want to use them.
A lovely book but I felt it was rather limited. The designs were nice but nothing special or particularly inspiring.

I have been doing embroidery (on and off) for about 20 years and I love to find new patterns. My favorite projects include making personalized flour sack towels for my friends and family and this book give me so many ideas. Besides being a craft pattern book it also makes a really gorgeous coffee table book. There are amazing photographs of the author's works and there is just about every plant and flower I can think of in this book. I enjoyed the use of color and the accuracy of these plants. The author really got the details down and these pieces look just like my plants! The detail work that has gone into these patters just blows me away! I would say that this author is an embroidery perfectionist.

On personal preference alone: I didn’t like that all the color photographs were upfront and then the patterns were in the back of the book. As I am a visual person I would have much rather preferred everything together so I don’t have to flip back and forth to get the pattern and the final product. Also I do think that this book is for intermediate and advanced embroiders as the patterns are more outlines with a thread suggestion. I received an ARC via NetGallery and I am leaving my honest review.

This book is simply gorgeous. I'm already a big fan of Kazuko Aoki's embroidery patterns, so it's very exciting to see another book of hers translated into English (although, I admit that I'm enough of a fan-girl to have previously bought some of her pattern books directly from Japan - but obviously there's some guesswork involved since I don't speak Japanese.)

The first half of Embroidered Kitchen Garden is filled with beautiful photographs of hand embroidery that you'll be able to recreate yourself, they are so incredibly pretty. The theme is based on vegetables, herbs and flowers, there's also a section on garden visitors (I'm weirdly excited to stitch some wood lice, even though they terrify me!) and there's a little bit of information about each of the items, which is a lovely touch.

The second half of the book is made up of easy to follow templates (I generally just copy/sketch them free-hand onto the fabric in pencil rather than tracing as they're all easy to draw and it's nice to add your own touch), patterns and instructions. There's an illustrated guide for every stitch you'll need to use, a list of tools needed (embroidery hoop, threads, needles, fabric, etc.) and lots of helpful tips. Kazuko uses DMC brand embroidery threads and the colour codes for everything you'll need are included if you want to buy the same ones, but you don't have to use these, it's perfectly okay to use any embroidery thread and unbranded/inexpensive ones are fine, especially for practice.

For anybody new to embroidery who might be thinking this book is too advanced for you - it really isn't! This is actually deceptively easy, just jump straight into it. Everything takes practice, you really can't go wrong as long as you have the basic materials - use whatever colours you like! The possibilities for things to embroider these beautiful motifs onto are endless; tea towels, tote bags, clothing, table cloths, wash cloths, pillow cases, etc. Personally I like to leave them in the embroidery hoop and display them as they are - these also make lovely and unique gifts.

Thank you so much to Zakka Workshop, Kazuko Aoki and Netgalley for an E-ARC of this book.

Fantastic pictures and lovely ideas for a simple cute garden design to add to almost anything. Will use these ideas when I get into embroidery for sure!

Embroidered Kitchen Garden is a new tutorial guide for surface embroidery by Kazuko Aoki. Originally published in Japanese in 2017, this English translation is due out 1st Sept. 2019 from Zakka Workshop. It's 104 pages and will be available in paperback format.

The author/artist's work is delicate and realistic. This is the third book from Zakka Workshop featuring her botanical surface embroidery designs. This one (see cover) features colorful vegetables and herbs, along with some insects and other garden creatures.These would be wonderful on table linens, decorative thread paintings, clothing, soft furnishings, and many other uses.

Roughly the first half of the book is a photo gallery of the included designs. Some are pictured as they are in the templates at the back of the book, and some are positioned in garden-scapes together. There is an herb garden composition with a beehive, herbs, and even a tree with a bird and birdhouse that is lovely and colorful.

The gallery of designs is followed by a how-to materials and stitching tutorial with stitch diagrams and tips for using the included pattern templates. These are clear enough to be accessible to beginning embroiderers. The designs themselves aren't overly simple, but they're well diagrammed in the templates with recommended stitches and colors. The thread recommendations are for DMC mouline (6 strand floss), but conversions for silks or specialty fibres are available online for more advanced or adventurous stitchers.

There's a short list of included plants at the back of the book with common, botanical (Latin) names, and indigenous locations included for further inspiration. The artist's afterword was interesting also (she's a gardener and takes inspiration from nature and her own garden).

Really pretty designs, well drawn and appealing.

Five stars.