Summer embroidery is full of color and life—wildflowers reaching toward the sun, kitchen gardens coming into season, and small details gathered from days spent outdoors.
The patterns below come from embroidery books available at Brooklyn Haberdashery, with patterns from various designers. These are patterns found within books rather than kits, giving you the freedom to choose your own threads, fabrics, and colors. Stitch one motif as a small summer project, combine several into a garden sampler, or use them to embellish a favorite bag, napkin, garment, or piece of household linen.
Explore the summer motifs below, each linked to the book where it appears.
A Summer Spent Outdoors
Picnics, music, nature walks, and other warm-weather pleasures come together in this lively collection from Yumiko Higuchi. The individual motifs can be stitched separately as small patches and embellishments or arranged together to tell the story of a favorite summer adventure.
Stitching Through the Seasons by Yumiko Higuchi
From the Summer Kitchen Garden
Kazuko Aoki finds inspiration in the changing life of the garden. Her embroidered figs and juneberries capture the particular beauty of summer produce, from ripening fruit to tiny blossoms and leaves rendered in delicate detail.
Embroidered Kitchen Garden by Kazuko Aoki
A Garden in Full Bloom
The summer garden is at its most abundant in these cheerful designs by Yumiko Higuchi. Tall stems, open flowers, and wandering vines create the feeling of a garden growing freely—perfect for a seasonal sampler or a colorful piece of embroidered linen.
A Year of Embroidery by Yumiko Higuchi
Summer Botanicals by Alice Makabe
Alice Makabe’s botanical embroidery has a soft, lyrical quality, with familiar flowers translated into expressive shapes and beautifully layered stitches. Worked against a dark background, these colorful summer blooms feel especially rich and luminous.
Artful Botanical Embroidery by Alice Makabe
Tiny Garden Worlds by Mayuka Morimoto
Mayuka Morimoto’s embroidery is filled with the quiet discoveries of a day outdoors: small flowers, birds, insects, and woodland creatures tucked among the leaves. Her detailed motifs can become framed artwork, embroidered accessories, or charming additions to a larger summer scene.
Embroidery Garden of Flowers & Animals by Mayuka Morimoto
Delicate Flowers for Everyday Things
Alice Makabe’s smaller botanical motifs are well suited to adding a little hand-stitched detail to the things you use every day. A single flower, leafy stem, or scattering of berries can bring a plain handkerchief, blouse, pouch, or table linen quietly to life.
Beautiful Botanical Embroidery by Alice Makabe
