Sewing the seeds of a beautiful garden

Continuing to try to stay safely distanced from others but also stay engaged and involved in activities that harvest joy, Daniel Island resident Jacqueline Gowe has taken her affinity with gardening and her strong sense of stewardship to the environment and has tied the two loves together with a colorful artistic creation.

 

Gowe was inspired early on in the pandemic to take out her embroidery needle and start a project of embroidering small vignettes of the many flowers growing in her own backyard. 

 

“I love all needle work from crocheting to knitting to sewing, but embroidery, to me, is the most fulfilling because it allows me to harness my creative energy. It is like painting with thread,” Gowe said. “I love to decide on a subject, draw what it is I want to embroider, choose the palette and the materials to repurpose. I find the process very satisfying. Since I get bored easily, the choice of embroidering small images of flowers allows me the gratification of seeing the project come to fruition quickly.” 

 

The inspiration for Gowe’s flowers comes from the garden she’s cultivated over the years, which is all organic, so they pair nicely with the recycled canvas: repurposed denim from her kids’ outgrown jeans. From her rain barrels and composting bins to her no-plastic living, her all-organic diet to her hybrid vehicle, Gowe is a true environmentalist with admirable habits of reducing, reusing and recycling as a lifestyle.

 

Gowe embroiders on denim because it was what was on hand during the pandemic. 

 

“I had lots of jeans that my children had grown out of stashed away in a closet. I was going to donate them but, in the end, I found that I love working on denim, it is a perfect material,” she said. “Each piece of denim is unique due to the different washes the different colors of denim add interest.” 

 

First, Gowe sketches her flowers directly on the denim in pencil from a photo she has taken, she goes over the sketch and draws a more definitive motif in ink. Thus far, Gowe’s collection of flowers includes echinacea, Jewel of Opar, crocosmia, rudbeckia or black-eyed Susans, sunflowers, and stokes aster as well as some annuals such as zinnia and cosmos.

 

Gowe’s garden is as abundant as it is colorful – lots of vegetables, tomatoes, basil and cucumbers fill the area of the garden the Gowe family affectionately call “la fattorina” – the little farm. 

 

“The farm kept me busy all spring and into the summer. I love growing things to eat but I also love flowers, especially native flowers and my garden is filled with them,” Gowe said. 

 

Gowe’s gardening doesn’t end as we head into the fall months. She’s excited to be planting fall crops of tomato, broccoli rabe, fall squashes and of course more beautiful flowers to serve as her muse.  

 

Eventually, she said, the denim squares embroidered with flowers will be sewn together, “to make a ‘flowers of the garden during the pandemic’ quilt to serve as reminder of the days that turned into weeks and months spent alone with my family, each of us doing our best to remain positive and find ways to use our time well.”