Satisfying Stitches

Create beautiful embroidery designs while relieving stress and improving your mental health.

Discover the creative satisfaction and stress-relieving benefits of embroidery while stitching fun, modern, vibrant designs such as flowers, plants, animals, landscapes, and celestial scenes. Beginning a new creative pursuit can be intimidating, but Satisfying Stitches takes all the guesswork and fear out of getting started with techniques designed to boost confidence and provide relaxation. This easy-to-follow, photo-illustrated guide includes a review of the basic and inexpensive supplies needed to get started, foundational techniques, and step-by-step instructions for creating a variety of stitches. As your skills and confidence grow, you will find that stitches that may look advanced are quite simple, and you’ll be able to easily add dimension and texture to your designs. The exclusive embroidery designs include a wide variety of motifs and patterns, such as houseplants, florals, mushrooms, butterflies, fish, landscapes, and sunsets, in a variety of color palettes. The projects are divided into three levels to match your confidence, skill level, and time. While most beginner books don’t go beyond a couple of easy stitches, Satisfying Stitches takes the opposite approach, incorporating stitches that pack a big “wow” factor but are quite easy, such as fern stitch, wheatear stitch, thistle flowers, and woven wheel roses. Author Hope Brasfield offers tons of encouragement to beginners and beyond. You’ll learn to embrace imperfection, slow down, and enjoy the process. You will also discover, as Hope did, that embroidery offers much more than a creative outlet. Focusing on something that requires imagination, handwork, and concentration can help reduce stress and promote relaxation. Satisfying Stitches features: A wide range of attractive embroidery stitches that can be used to create any embroidery designs 18 original embroidery designs for popular motifs Detailed step-by-step instructions with clear photographs Troubleshooting tips and tricks throughout the book So much more than pretty patterns, Satisfying Stitches offers an exciting opportunity to gain new skills, become a more confident creative, ditch the smart phone, and de-stress.

Precise explanations and instructions, clearly illustrated, on how to work chain, back, cross, knotted, woven stitches, and many more — 178 in all, including Cable Outline, Whipped Satin, and Eyelet Buttonhole. Over 1400 illustrations.

Stitch playful projects Dive into Laura’s delightful world of embroidery and learn how to create small, free-form embroidery pieces that are alive with color and texture. With instructions for 21 basic embroidery stitches and 6 projects, all in Laura’s signature colorful, whimsical style, you’ll transform a flat, plain surface into a joyful, design-packed art piece. Stitch on wool, felt, or silk, and enjoy the simple pleasure of slow stitching. Includes a gallery of display ideas, as well as additional ideas for using free-form stitching. • Begin with simple shapes and fill them with improvisational stitchery • Change up the provided designs, swapping out colors and trying new stitch combinations, to create your own unique work • From popular, best-selling author and teacher Laura Wasilowski

Describes basic materials and techniques, features a stitch glossary, and provides instructions together with simple, advanced, and inspirational projects for tent, florentine, cross, and pulled thread stitches

Now featuring new instructions, new illustrations, and new information, The Principles of Knitting—beloved by knitters everywhere and one of the most requested out-of-print books for years—finally gets the revision that fans have been clamoring for! A treasured guide beloved by knitters everywhere, the classic book The Principles of Knitting is finally available again in a fully revised and updated edition. This is the definitive book on knitting techniques, with valuable information for everyone from beginners to experienced knitters. June Hiatt presents not only a thorough, thoughtful approach to the craft, but also a passion for carrying on the art of knitting to future generations. She has repeatedly tested the various techniques and presents them with clear, easy-to-follow instructions—as well as an explanation of what each one can contribute to your knitting. Informed by decades of experience and thousands of hours of practice, this comprehensive resource offers a variety of ways to approach every skill and technique and offers solutions that can help solve the most challenging aspects of any knitting project. The Principles of Knitting has been totally rewritten—new instructions, new illustrations, and new information. While the basics of knitting have not changed much, June’s understanding of the material has deepened over the last twenty-five years, and she’s eager to share what she has learned with the knitting world. In addition, the book has been reorganized to make it easier to use and has a gorgeous new design. Reading The Principles of Knitting is like having a knitting mentor by your side who can answer any knitting question you have in an honest, intelligent, informed manner.