Hip to Stitch

by Melinda Barta

Ideas for embellishing beautiful garments and home decor to add personal touches are presented with easy, step-by-step instructions, illustrations, and 38 stitch techniques and 20 hand-embroidered projects, in this stylish stitching how-to. Included are motifs to dress up a skirt, day tripper bags, a guitar pick case, a picnic baby bib, a butterfly picture frame, hand-embroidered pillows, stitched note cards, and heirloom scrapbooks. Throughout the book are helpful tips and hints such as hiding knots and thread tails, sewing a pocket, making durable stitches, and working with silk and wire. In addition to teaching the basics, this guide can make projects ambitious by experimenting with stitches and the number and placement of motifs so that even experienced stitchers will find renewed inspiration for embroidery.

Genres: Nonfiction, Crafts

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

Reviews

[Kelly (Maybedog) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this book and a lot of it is because I like the style. (I have "Hip to Knit" in the same series which I also like a lot.) in addition to the usual flowers and abstract designs, there are cute grasshoppers and ants. Seriously, the placement on the Bob is adorable.

There's a lot of great information like what the floss numbers are in both the DMC and Anchor floss for the colors used in the book, and recommended tools for your embroidery kit.

There are random tips like how the lanolin in a wool needle book (one of the projects) keeps needles from corroding. Another tip is avoiding bulk on the underside of your fabric, something I have a big problem with.

There are lots of colorful instructions, although I wasn't as enamored of the illustrations for the stitches themselves. They were okay but not great. But there were a wide range of techniques such as beading, working with silk and wire, and machine embroidering. The latter plays with needle tension to make a kind of shaggy surface.

The best thing was that there are projects I haven't seen elsewhere such as a thimble, scrapbook pages and and a guitar pick case. There's also instructions for embroidering a nap. The needle book project is also a sampler of stitches used in something useful and not sampler-looking. I've been looking for a good needlework project and I think this is the one.

The one complaint I have is that there isn't a huge variety of motifs, none that aren't used in a project. On the plus side, each design is included in the actual project pages rather than having to look somewhere else to find them.

If it weren't for that lack, and that there aren't a lot of projects, this would be a five plus star book. As an intro to the art of regular/basic embroidery this book is excellent. I definitely buying myself a copy.

[Jason Waldron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, I haven't actually read this book. But since I'm married to Melinda, I watched and was there at the time of creation. Let me just say that if you're an intermediate to advanced embroiderer, there are a lot of amazing designs in here, like my favorite - the guitar pick case. I have my own, and yes, that is my Gibson Backpacker guitar pictured in the book itself.

[Slynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool ideas, just no projects that I absolutely have to do.

[Susan]

has cool embroidered map project

[Jo]

Lovely photos. Aimed at the intermediate to advanced. I liked that there were a number of tiny scale projects.