Stitch London

Stitch London: a city of people pigeons, puddles and purly kings and queens. Want to whip up your own Royal couple to add a bit of majesty to your manterpiece? Need to knit some little London landmarks to show off your travels? Whether you love London, or haven’t made it there yet, Stitch London will show you a whole new side of the city and its people and places. And if you can’t knit? Fear not! Author Lauren O’Farrell (fearless leader of the knitting community Stitch London) will show you how to get clicking with your sticks and string in no time at all. From cute London characters and critters, to practical accessories for every walk of life, these projects are simple enough for beginners, yet bonkers enough to inspire more seasoned knitters who love to knit, but don't like rules. It even comes with a everything you need (from needles to thread) to knit your own Cooey the proud London pigeon! So hop on, mind the gap and Stitch London like you mean it. Go on!

London Stitch and Knit: A Craft Lover?s Guide to London?s Fabric, Knitting and Haberdashery Shops presents a brilliantly designed guide to London?s best fabric, knitting and haberdashery shops. With a design aesthetic to inspire any craft lover, London Stitch and Knit seamlessly documents the city?s best to provide a comprehensive guide that encompasses the handmade and the vintage whilst illustrating the delightful microcosm of London?s craft scene. Freelance writer and photographer Leigh Metcalf discovers the hidden gems in London?s ever-growing craft community, promoting independent shops as well as craftspeople and their work. Ever since she arrived in London from the US, she has made it her mission to discover the best places for haberdashery supplies. Drawing on her experience from the last five years, Leigh combines well-informed narrative, illustrations and a beautiful, layered design, to discover the history and operations of approximately 50 shops?divided by London territories. Metcalf graduated from Georgia State University with a BA in English Literature and formerly worked as an Assistant Director of Admissions at the Art Institute of Atlanta. Her freelance career has seen articles published for magazines such as Mollie Makes and Pretty Nostalgic. London Stitch and Knit is born of Metcalf?s successful blog (http://foundnowhome.blogspot.co.uk/), described by Lauren Smith, Creative Director of Pop-Up Magazine as ?one of only a handful of blogs that I even bother reading anymore?.

This unique book collection culls the expertise of academics and the actual embroidery machines archives of Manchester Metropolitan University in Great Britain whose specialist embroidery department has been instrumental in artistic and educational innovations in textiles since the 1960s. This book is the definitive record of the vast number of machines from the traditional Irish Embroidery machines to the latest generation of computerized sewing machines and features a rich and fascinating record of the machines themselves and the samples and artwork that were produced on them. Each contributor gives their own individual perspective on machine stitch and the book illustrates how key machines can be applied to the artistic, industrial and domestic practice and shows how to combine techniques and develop new ideas in machine embroidery, a creative medium that is flourishing in both design and production.

Create your own slice of the Big Apple with twenty colorful projects for knitters of all skill levels, from little characters to quirky accessories. Stitch New York: the knitty city that never stops stitching! Want a breakfast with Handmade Holly Golightly? Knit Feisty Fiber Firefighters? Or hail a Small Yellow Taxi that really rolls? From proud and purly Little Lady Liberty, to the Squishy Empire State, to the star-struck Broadway Beanie, Stitch New York is a melting pot of Big Apple knitting patterns. Can’t knit? Fuggedaboudit! We'll show you how and have you knitting in a New York minute. So hop in, cast on and lose your heart to the homemade metropolis of Stitch New York. Go on.

The history of men's needlework has long been considered a taboo subject. This is the first book ever published to document and critically interrogate a range of needlework made by men. It reveals that since medieval times men have threaded their own needles, stitched and knitted, woven lace, handmade clothes, as well as other kinds of textiles, and generally delighted in the pleasures and possibilities offered by all sorts of needlework. Only since the dawn of the modern age, in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, did needlework become closely aligned with new ideologies of the feminine. Since then men's needlework has been read not just as feminising but as queer. In this groundbreaking study Joseph McBrinn argues that needlework by male artists as well as anonymous tailors, sailors, soldiers, convalescents, paupers, prisoners, hobbyists and a multitude of other men and boys deserves to be looked at again. Drawing on a wealth of examples of men's needlework, as well as visual representations of the male needleworker, in museum collections, from artist's papers and archives, in forgotten magazines and specialist publications, popular novels and children's literature, and even in the history of photography, film and television, he surveys and analyses many of the instances in which “needlemen” have contested, resisted and subverted the constrictive ideals of modern masculinity. This audacious, original, carefully researched and often amusing study, demonstrates the significance of needlework by men in understanding their feelings, agency, identity and history.

The events of your life, from local walks to exotic trips, can provide endless inspiration for textile art. This inspiring book shows you how to record your experiences, using sketchbooks, journals and photography, to create personal narratives that can form a starting point for more finished stitched-textile pieces. Acclaimed textile artist and teacher Cas Holmes, whose work is often inspired by her life and the journeys she makes, helps you find inspiration through your own life and explains how to record what you see in sketchbooks and journals, which can often become beautiful objects in themselves. She explains how you can use photography, both as documentation and as inspiration, and sometimes incorporate it into the work itself, along with found objects and ephemera. Throughout the book are useful techniques that can be harnessed to add extra interest to your work, such as methods for making layered collages, how to 'sketch' with stitch, and advice on design and colour. If you want to create beautiful, unique work inspired by your life and travels, this is the perfect book for you.

The making of fashionable women's dress in Georgian England necessitated an inordinate amount of manual labour. From the mantuamakers and seamstresses who wrought lengths of silk and linen into garments, to the artists and engravers who disseminated and immortalised the resulting outfits in print and on paper, Georgian garments were the products of many busy hands. This Element centres the sartorial hand as a point of connection across the trades which generated fashionable dress in the eighteenth century. Crucially, it engages with recreation methodologies to explore how the agency and skill of the stitching hand can inform understandings of craft, industry, gender, and labour in the eighteenth century. The labour of stitching, along with printmaking, drawing, and painting, composed a comprehensive culture of making and manual labour which, together, constructed eighteenth-century cultures of fashionable dress.