Virginia A. Taylor, a homemaker and longtime Baltimore resident, died Thursday of heart failure and pneumonia at Bon Secours Hospital. She was 86.

Born Virginia Oliver in Burkeville, Va., she married Lloyd McKenley Taylor in 1938 and soon thereafter the couple moved to Baltimore, where Mr. Taylor got a job as a stocker at the Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point.

Mrs. Taylor was an excellent seamstress, gardener and cook. She filled the back yard of her West Baltimore home with flowers, and was known among family for her soups, stews and fried chicken.

She frequently made rice pudding and bread pudding for a granddaughter's husband, chiding her granddaughter, Virginia Freeman, by saying that the dishes were too fattening for Mrs. Freeman to eat.

"Her work was us," she said. "She was Grandma, and she was wonderful."

Services will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at New Shiloh Baptist Church, 2100 N. Monroe St.

In addition to her husband of 63 years, Mrs. Taylor is survived by three daughters, Phyllis Battle Hawkins of Woodlawn, Marjorie Taylor Bush of Annapolis and Virginia Taylor Langley of Baltimore; seven grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.