Shakespeare’s Flowers in Stumpwork takes Jane Nicholas’s readers further along the path she explored in Stumpwork Medieval Flora (2009).

Wild flowers, herbs and gardens are a recurring feature in Shakespeare’s work: from Oberon’s ‘bank where the wild thyme blows’ and where oxlips, violets, woodbine, musk-roses and eglantine grow, to the Spring Song, ‘when daisies pied, and violets blue’, with lady-smocks and yellow cuckoo-buds ‘do paint the meadows with delight’. His plays are rich in the plant and herb lore of Tudor England, using plants to symbolise, among other virtues and vices, yearning, unrequited love, malice and mischief, triumph and glory.

The projects in this book, worked in stumpwork and surface embroidery, feature many of the flowers found in the gardens, fields and hedgerows of the time. Lavishly illustrated in colour, with detailed step-by-step instructions accompanied by explanatory diagrams, Shakespeare’s Flowers in Stumpwork will make a delightful addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in textured and dimensional embroidery.

Contents:

Introduction
Part 1 A Border of Shakespeare’s Flowers, Apothecary Rose, Barberries, Bellflower, Borage, Cornflower, Gillyflower, Grapevine, Heartsease, Knapweed, and Periwinkle Plum, Redcurrants, Strawberry, Sweet Briar
Part 2 Shakespeare’s Flowers: The Samplers

Sampler One: Sweet Briar, Grapevine, Heartsease and Strawberries
Sampler Two: Apothecary Rose, Borage, Cornflower and Redcurrants
Sampler Three: Gillyflower, Periwinkle, Plums and Barberries

Part 3 Elizabethan Flower Panel, Bluebell, Crab Apple, Honeysuckle, Lancaster Rose, Peapod, Primrose
Part 4 Garland of Spring Flowers, English daisy, Forget-me-nots, Wild Pansies Snowdrops
Part 5