I want to share with you the most recent piece to come out of my workroom.

This is the second Secret Garden I have created. The first is a traditional English flower garden that resides in a vintage cigar box on my piano. I don’t know if there will be more gardens in my future but I suspect so.

This garden started as a ‘garage sale find’ my son brought home. As you can see, it has been transformed. I will explain the piece in terms of the design elements of Content, Balance, and Pattern. This is what I would share with you if I were able to walk with you through my Zen Secret Garden.

A Zen garden is a place of peace and contemplation. This garden is designed to help the viewer contemplate the stages of life. Each of the elements used in the design relate to various stages of life’s journey inviting the viewer to reflect on their own travels from birth to death.The inspiration for the top came from Marie Wilkinson’s Chinese Geometrics. The project was a 1980’s era UFO passed along to me from a stitching friend.

For this piece I used several different types of balance to create a unified but interesting piece. A Zen garden should have a feeling of peace and stability so I used symmetrical balance in several places to enhance these qualities. I started building this feeling of stability by using symmetrical balanced hexagons on the outside cover. Silver and gold threads were used to represent old and new friendships that enhance our lives. Each individual hexagon was balanced in terms of both color and stitch. Each is outlined in silver with the patterning in gold and blue. A variegated thread kept things from being too static and served to highlight the many depths we experience in our friendships.