Essential Stitch Guides
Royal School of Needlework Series
Jacqui McDonald
Search Press
October 2010/ ISBN 9781844485505
How-To Books/Embroidery
Reviewed
by Rachel A Hyde
AMAZON
UK
Associated
with the 17th century, crewelwork (also known as Jacobean embroidery)
depicts lush, exotic-looking fantasy flowers and fantastic beasts
in colored wools. It is also well known for looking complex and
involved, so here is another useful Royal School of Needlework primer
to show you how the magic is worked.
Books that open flat and stay open while you work the examples are
a boon to crafters everywhere, and this is one of those, as are
all the books in this series. You can learn all about the history
of this fascinating embroidery style briefly at the beginning, and
discover what you need to amass in order to start stitching. The
thing I like most about this series is that it does not teach just
the stitches so that you can embark on working kits and patterns,
but gets under the skin of the subject to enable you to start designing
your own. It does this by showing how the stitches are worked in
a series of helpful staged photographs, but then it goes on to show
examples of traditional and modern crewelwork and talks about how
they are thought out. This approach might appeal more to those who
are already proficient in some basic embroidery stitches and know
something about designing, but there is nothing like having a go
and seeing what happens. This is what the book advocates. I like
empowering books like this that really teach a subject from the
ground up and get you designing from the start; one for the keeper
shelf.
Reviews of other titles in the Royal School of Needlework
Series
Blackwork
Silk
Shading
Crewelwork
Stumpwork
Bead Embroidery
Appliqué
Raised
Embroidery
The
RSN Book of Embroidery
UK Reviewer: Rachel Hyde's work can be found in
The Bead Magazine, Making Jewellery and www.craftsuprint.com/rachel-a-hyde/
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