Botanical Embroidery: A Garden of Plant and Flower Designs to Stitch by Arounna Khounnoraj

Embroidery artist and founder of the craft studio sensation @bookhou teaches you to stitch detailed, realistic flowers and botanicals: her new book offers a wide range of embroidery skills and demonstrates how each can be used to create lovely, naturalist designs for home goods, garments, and accessories.

Plants and flowers are favorite embroidery motifs, and Arounna Khounnoraj’s expert stitching instructionsand range of techniques are here to help you stitch up a whole garden.

This detailed guide features illustrated instructions for 40 essential stitches (everything from the tiny seed stitch to 3D beauties like fishbone stitch and turkey work) and offers a nature-inspired approach that ensures each botanical motif is unique and realistic.

Once you've mastered the foundation stitches, the book showsyou how to create 20 flowers and botanicals and then combine them to make 15 pretty projects.

Change the size, color, or number of flowers and plants; the possibilities for variations are endless. Try your hand at creating a pillow, napkin, or zip case, then move on to more advanced projects including wall art and an embellished sweater and shirt. Make embroidered hoops to display or embellishvintage finds or items you own already, and use these techniques for modern mending.

Arounna Khounnoraj is a Canadian artist and maker based in Toronto, where she emigrated with her family from Laos at the age of four. In 2002 she started Bookhou, a multidisciplinary studio with her husband, John Booth. Together, they explore a variety of printing and embroidery techniques through making utilitarian objects such as bags, home goods, and textiles. Khounnoraj is a craft-influencer in her own right, with 716,000 followers onInstagram. She runs regular workshops and is recognized for her beautiful embroidery.