The Embroiderer's Bookshelf

Easy-to-follow instructions, tips, stitch diagrams are included, making the designs easy to follow and fun to stitch.

Patricia Bage's Beginner's Guide to Drawn Thread Embroidery features four projects you can make from start to finish with several designs shown in more than one colorway.

The designs range from classic band samplers in both white and colored threads, as well as finished items such as keepsake box lids and delicate, lacy cushions. Each exquisite project combines traditional counted embroidery techniques with contemporary embroidery threads and fibers, colors and decorative embellishments worked on evenweave fabric.

Blackwork is a form of counted thread embroidery, where patterns are created utilizing basic stitches. These patterns can be repeating and used as fillers and bands, or used to created detailed works of embroidered art worked in a variety of stitches.

The book includes a brief history of blackwork and of the Royal School of Needlework (RSN), as well as the most common stitches used in traditional blackwork embroidery, along with detailed photographs and descriptions of working them.

This hard-to-fine book is the stuff of an embroiderer's dreams. Historical embroideries and goldwork are given the royal treatment, with finely photographed details and detailed how-to's. For example, you can learn to make one of the Napoleonic bees from the Château de Fontainebleau in Goldwork, or a padded satin stitch monogram for linens.

This title was written in conjunction with DMC (the abbreviation of Dollfus Mieg et Cie), the famous thread company founded in France more than 250 years ago, and features material from their extensive collection, as well as museums and collections throughout France.

This is a good book for beginners - including children - who want to learn and use basic stitches in a simple, quick-to-stitch project. The cover projects are attractive, however stitchers with even the most basic embroidery experience will find many of the projects in this book too simple and may be disappointed.