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.

Learn the art of thread painting from Instagram sensation Michelle Staub Cats and dogs seem to always have a paw planted firmly in our hearts. Capture the life in their eyes and the texture of their fur with a unique embroidered pet portrait! Insta-famous artist Michelle Staub puts a modern spin on thread painting with her easy-to-learn approach. Get started with 4 basic embroidery stitches, and follow the detailed tutorials to hone your skills. Capture awe-inspiring details of your pet with lessons in full-color thread painting or go clean with a simple line drawing—the choice is yours. Learn to personalize your art piece with names, dates, and decorative accents. With 20 sample patterns to customize, you can easily recreate any breed! Paint stunningly realistic pet portraits with just a needle and thread Try your hand at two styles—minimal outlines and incredible full-color renderings Make it modern with floral garlands, personalized banners, and crisp lettering Start today with 4 easy stitches and 20 customizable projects

A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Best Book of the Year An Amazon.com Top Ten Best Book of 2009 A Washington Post Book World’s Ten Best Book of the Year A California Literary Review Best Book of 2009 An L.A. Times Top 25 Non-Fiction Book of 2009 An NPR Best Book of the Year, Best Memoir With this stunning graphic memoir, David Small takes readers on an unforgettable journey into the dark heart of his tumultuous childhood in 1950s Detroit, in a coming-of-age tale like no other. At the age of fourteen, David awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover his throat had been slashed and one of his vocal chords removed, leaving him a virtual mute. No one had told him that he had cancer and was expected to die. The resulting silence was in keeping with the atmosphere of secrecy and repressed frustration that pervaded the Small household and revealed itself in the slamming of cupboard doors, the thumping of a punching bag, the beating of a drum. Believing that they were doing their best, David’s parents did just the reverse. David’s mother held the family emotionally hostage with her furious withdrawals, even as she kept her emotions hidden — including from herself. His father, rarely present, was a radiologist, and although David grew up looking at X-rays and drawing on X-ray paper, it would be years before he discovered the shocking consequences of his father’s faith in science. A work of great bravery and humanity, Stitches is a gripping and ultimately redemptive story of a man’s struggle to understand the past and reclaim his voice.

The Absolute Beginners Guide: Stitching Beaded Jewelry is the introduction to bead stitching. This book helps beginners to have a successful start in stitching by answering questions like “What are the must-have supplies and tools?” and “How do I set up my workspace?” The projects introduce basic stitches starting with the easiest, such as cross-weave and right-angle weave, and moving into other more challenging techniques. Your confidence and skill set will grow as you work through the book, one project at a time.

The complete go-to guide for all things embroidery! Everything embroidery bundled into one helpful how-to guide! Expert embroiderer Christen Brown breaks down 500+ stitches from the basics for beginners to more complex designs for advanced stitchers. Stitches range from Lazy Daisy, French Knot, Herringbone, Capped, Chevron, and so much more. Create intricate art like Christen with inspiration such as psychedelic balloons, mushroom gardens, and flowered embroidered spirals. Bursting with color and beads, designs are perfect for contemporary embroidery art or crazy quilting. Start simple and learn how to choose tools and threads, achieve the perfect stitch, and then start designing your unique embroidery project. From basic stitches to complex combinations each of the 500+ designs comes with step-by-step instructions Mix it up and learn how to change the position of the stitch and use the distance between points Best-selling author Christen Brown provides expert guidance for all, including tips and instructions for left-handed embroiderers