Beginner's Guide To Silk Shading
(Beginner's Guide to Needlecrafts)

by Clare Hanham

If you have ever admired the detail and pleasing sheen of “thread painting” yet thought it looked far too advanced, think again. This helpful primer shows you that it is a lot easier than it looks and is, I have found, also not too expensive and remarkably addictive.

Grab a hoop, some plain fabric and floss, thread up a fine needle and off you go. It is good to see that you do not need much to start stitching, and if you are already an embroiderer (or even a crafter of another kind) you will have some of the items right away. Long and short stitch is the main stitch you have to learn, and I loved the simple but illustrative photos of how to perfect doing it straight and then in petals. Add a couple of other stitches (all of them easy to do) and find a source of inspiration for a simple outline drawing (again, easier than it sounds) and you are ready to roll.

This type of embroidery takes practice, and this is why this is a comparatively slim book. There is not a lot to learn, and this book wisely eschews mere plain practice for the actual shaping of flowers, leaves, butterflies and shows you how to draw up the patterns.

I wish I had had this book when I started doing thread painting years ago – it bursts the myth utterly that this is a style of embroidery suitable for advanced stitchers only.