Juno’s Nature Embroidery Notebook: Stitching Plants, Animals, and Stories

“The most important thing is to stitch with a joyful heart,” contends Japanese needlework artist Juno in her delightful if challenging English-language debut. She provides instructions on how to embroider nature-inspired designs onto clothing and accessories, including flowers on a tote bag, mimosa branches around the neck of a blouse, and fluffy cats on a throw pillow. Many of the pieces are richly detailed, such as the white button-down shirt depicting a ski mountain with over a dozen tiny figures making their way down the slope, and a beach scene on linen pants featuring people lounging under palm trees and umbrellas. The brief instructions for each project will likely leave beginners feeling lost; a stunning design in which a white swallow in flight leaves a twinkling trail of clustered white and gray dots resembling the Milky Way is daunting, but the directions are only two steps long. Another drawback is the unintuitive organization: photographs of the completed projects take up the first half of the volume, with a breakdown of embroidering basics slotted in the middle and only then followed by instructions on how to make the projects. Still, advanced embroiderers will be wowed by the impressive needlework. (Mar.)