Modern Hand Stitching: dozens of stitches with creative free-form variations

Urbandale, Iowa, Landauer Publishing, 2014 ISBN: 13 978 1 935726 48 7

Ruth grew up in Japan. When four years old, an elderly neighbour taught her basic Sashiko and her love for stitching was born. Ruth’s stitching philosophy is ‘no rules, no boundaries’. This philosophy is the driver for the book.

Ruth’s first chapter is about supplies and how few are actually needed to handstitch. However, she qualifies this (it should be a warning perhaps?) with the rider that acquiring fibre, fabric, threads and beads can be addictive. She advises readers to experiment with tools to find what suits them best. Colourful photos illustrate items on the supply list.  She suggests items needed in a ‘stitch kit’ and gives us a clue to her fun approach by including, at the bottom of the list, chocolate. Also included are glasses, hand lotion, a nail file…

Next Ruth gives a pattern for a stitch sampler book, which is such a good idea for a beginner, who can refer back to it for inspiration. Then it’s into the stitches, starting with straight stitches, followed by ‘building’ stitches, cross stitches, knots, chain stitches, couching and wrapping. The last chapter describes how to finish the stitch sampler book.

Each stitch has its own page, with photos of how to execute it, with a facing page titled ‘No boundaries’, essentially suggestions and inspiration for pushing the stitch by varying thread weight, colour, length and spacing as well as a myriad of other ideas, depending on the stitch.

This is a colourful, nicely illustrated book, written with the beginner in mind but also useful for anyone wanting to embroider something on the wild side but unsure of how to go about it. Some of her ideas are quite fun and do encourage stitchers to escape their straightjackets. I did find one thing more than a mild irritant though – EVERY page which describes how to do a stitch has a pale blue box on it, with dark blue text, “Note: Remember to keep the needle on top of the fabric while stitching. Working on top of the fabric will limit the number of stitch motions needed, as well as reduce hand fatigue.’ I do not believe this advice is necessarily accurate to execute stitches the best way, neither does it have to repeated for EVERY stitch. 

Otherwise, a bright, well presented book which would be useful and encouraging for young stitchers. More experienced embroiderers may prefer the series in Stitch magazine by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn. 

Erica Marsden April 2014