Taking inspiration from the world around you and freeing up your inner child enough to experiment are essentials for this work. As long as you have a sewing machine with a swing needle that is capable of either dropping or covering the feed dogs, you can do this - perhaps it is a pity that a state-of-the-art machine with a formidable array of add-on feet is shown though! If designing for yourself is too daunting, then this is not the book for you; but if you are the type who keeps books of scribbled ideas and scrapbooks full of inspiring pictures, then you’ll have a ball. Learn how to do freestyle machine embroidery, and off you go to make bags made of strips of fabric, ribbons sewn together, decorated with buttons, fusible fibers, pleats or fancy stitches. The book does capture the essence of this way of working and comes up with some lovely purses that are great fun to make. You will need to be able to do things like putting in zippers before making up the bags so maybe this is not for the novice stitcher, but not a lot of needlework know-how is required. Aimed at quite a range of abilities, this is a fun book that got me wanting to create.

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