There's been a renaissance of sorts for handcrafts, especially fibrecrafts. Once considered a necessary day-to-day survival skill and learnt by girls at a young age, handsewing is enjoying a resurgence as a valid form of artistic expression. There have been a number of really appealing books on surface embroidery and utility sewing lately. This is another good one.
The introductory chapters contain the obligatory materials lists and photos, but also contain and interesting discussion of the creative philosophy.. why hand sew when there are faster methods of creating a finished product. The author makes a number of valid points.
The next four chapters (70% of the content) contain a variety of stitches and several tutorial projects per chapter primarily using utilitarian stitches, outlining and filling stitches, decorative stitches and finally 3dimensional stitches.
There's an alphabetical index and resource page (slanted toward readers in North America). The book emphasizes the creative process and artistic inspiration much more than slavishly following a tutorial in order to create a copy of the projects in the book. There are templates included but they're very basic and intended more as an inspirational jumping off point.
Four stars. Some nice projects and a lot of good thoughtful discourse on the fibre arts process.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes
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