Embroidery books
Books! Everything I do seems to come back to books. Whether they are stories and poems that inspire me, practical stitching books or beautiful books full of paintings and illustrations, books are at the heart of things for me. I was lucky enough to learn some basic embroidery, sewing and knitting when I was a child but when it came to relearning I turned to books. I know books don’t suit everyone for learning, some people definitely prefer to learn with a person but even then books are great for jogging your memory or learning a more advanced stitch.
This is the bookshelf around the corner from my workspace so it holds lots of stitching books but also books that I find inspiring. I love Indian and Persian miniatures, the colours and lines in them are so delicate. My lovely partner gave me a beautiful Kay Nielsen book of fairy tale illustrations that I am flicking through a lot at the moment. I also love poetry, Pablo Neruda was the starting point for my latest embroidery design ‘mother nature’ with words about spring ‘you can cut all the flowers but you cannot stop spring from coming’. These words felt particularly relevant this year. And a friend recently introduced me to Wendell Berry, lots of beautiful poetry about our relationship with nature.
Nature is a strong inspiration for me, flowers are my favourite things to draw and I love natural soft colours. At the moment, perhaps because of all the sea swimming, I am reading watery stories and myths and doodling water nymphs so I think my next pattern might be a watery one.
These books are my original embroidery books. As far as I remember Aimee Ray’s book doodle stitching was one of the first books I bought. Apart from having great stitch guides and notes on materials and tools at the beginning it made me realize I could just stitch the simple line drawings that I was doodling. This book presents things in a beautifully simple clear way and felt like a long way from the 1970’s books I was used to seeing in charity shops (I have quite a few of those too though).
After that I found Sublime stitching! Both of these books are quite old now but I would still recommend them for beginners. Jenny Hart (sublime stitching) has such clear and simple instructions and this book has iron on transfer patterns in it too.
Lastly is my stitch bible. This one was from a charity shop and I’ve had it for years and years, as you can tell by the state of it!. All the pages are falling out and I can never find it because I’m always moving it around the house but it’s the simplest book I own and the most useful. I think it’s a book that would have to be found second hand. It says 6p on the cover and I think it’s a long time since anyone bought a book for 6p! But if you are lucky enough to find one it’s a great and useful book.
I would love to hear about your favourite books, embroidery or otherwise, I’m always happy to have suggestions for novels to add to my pile of ‘books I must read’. I think I will blog about books once a month, perhaps focusing on a particular book or group of books. I have some lovely Japanese embroidery books and a few slow stitching books that I love too.
Well, this week in West Penwith has been very mixed up weather and not overly warm for May! Tomorrow is due to be wet and windy so I will definitely be having a cosy stitchy weekend. I hope you all manage to fit in some stitching too.