Today it is 11 below Fahrenheit in my garden. But inside it is warm and cozy and I dream of summer and flowers.

The rooftop garden on my Whimsy Lane quilt hosts a variety of pinks or dianthus flowers (a genus of about 34 species in the family Caryophyllaceae). Not only are my pinks pink but the edges are cut with a pinking blade making them pinked pinks.

The skinny stems are decorated with straight stitches placed across each one. Don’t you love how the size 12 Peas in a Pod thread stripes add a little whimsy to the flower stems?

Flower petal shapes are stitched with a size 8 Lettuce thread. It takes 3 types of embroidery stitches to finish each pink petal: the stem stitch around the yellow dot, the back stitch around the petal edges, and the fly stitch for the pinked edges. Add an orange French knot to the center of each flower and call the pinks a distant cousin of the Caryophyllaceae family.