Tag: reviews

Review: The Fabric of Civilization – How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel

toomanystitches3 Comments

This post contains affiliate links meaning if you sign up to the course from this blog, I get a small commission. However, any recommendations and opinions are my own. For more information, please click here. 

Some books manage to demand you read every page of them and this week’s review is for one such text. Fancy figuring out the secrets of Machiavelli’s childhood and how textiles shaped his plays and thinking? Eager to find out just how hard it is to knit a 3D bunny on a machine? Read on – this is the text for you!

Read More »

Review: This Golden Fleece

toomanystitches7 Comments

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you make any purchases via these links, I receive a small commission that contributes to the running costs of the blog. However, any recommendations and opinions in this review are my own. For more information, please click here.

I’ve been very much enjoying the number of textile-themed narrative non-fiction books being published lately. From Kassia St Clair’s brilliant offerings, The Golden Thread and The Secret Lives of Colour, through to the exceptional Threads of Life and the still interesting but not entirely my cup of tea, Knitlandia.

astitchornine (2)

Read More »

Review: Threads of Life

toomanystitches6 Comments

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you purchase the book through these links, I receive a small commission that contributes to the running costs of the blog. However, any recommendations and opinions in this review are my own. For more information, please click here. 

Art? Handicraft? Women’s work? What is needlework to you? To Clare Hunter, needlework is not just a decorative frivolity but true skilled labour and a means of telling the stories of the individuals, countries and historical periods. To her, the act of sewing is to secure and trap out personal memories in thread and fabric. ‘Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle’ is Clare Hunter’s exploration of the oft-forgotten tales of the accomplished hands that created many different textile pieces, lost and preserved, and the political and social environments surrounding their work.

astitchornine (12)

Read More »

Review: Uwagake and Shitagake-Chidori Kagari Temari (手まり上掛け千鳥かがりと下掛け千鳥かがり)

toomanystitches1 Comment

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you purchase the book through these links, I receive a small commission to help keep running the blog. However, any recommendations and opinions in this review are my own. For more information, please click here. I received a copy of this book as a gift. All images featured are from the book and are the work of the author, Ai Mizuta.

I’ve moved recently and one of the things that this always forces you to confront is quite how much I love books. This isn’t a particularly new realisation to me, I’ve always been a huge fan of novels, short stories or any form of literature, but I have really managed to amass quite a craft book collection over the last few years.

astitchornine (4)

Read More »

Review: The Big Book of Fibery Rainbows

toomanystitchesLeave a comment

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you purchase the book through these links, I receive a small commission that contributes to the running costs of the blog. However, any recommendations and opinions in this review are my own. For more information, please click here. 

‘The BIG Book of Fibery Rainbows: Creating and Working with Multi Colored Fibers and Palettes’ by Suzy Brown and Arlene Thayer of Fiberygooness was always going to be one of those books that someone would have to actively dissuade me from buying after reading the title. Fibre, colours and books, what was there going to be not to love?

astitchornine (2)

Read More »

Bluprint and Craftsy

toomanystitches9 Comments

I’m a little late to the party on this one, but as I thought I’d finally find the time to finish up a Craftsy course I’d watched part-way through and then abandoned, I couldn’t escape sharing a few of my thoughts on some of the changes that Craftsy has undergone in its reimaging as the new Bluprint website. For those of you not familiar with Craftsy, it was an online craft course platform, where you could purchase a video course, watch away at your leisure, and interact with other students and the instructor through a type of integrated forum.astitchornine (1)

Read More »

Review: The Golden Thread

toomanystitches8 Comments

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you purchase the book through these links, I receive a small commission that contributes to the running costs of the blog. However, any recommendations and opinions in this review are my own. For more information, please click here. 

It was always going to be a challenge to dislike to a book that starts with the sentence ‘I am assuming here, Dear Reader, that you are not naked’. It was also always going to be a challenge to dislike any book that promised an adventure through our textile past, present and future.

astitchornine (2)

Read More »

Review: The Secret Lives of Colour

toomanystitches10 Comments

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you purchase the book through these links, I receive a small commission to help keep running the blog. However, any recommendations and opinions in this review are my own. For more information, please click here. 

For regular readers of the blog, it will come as no surprise when I say I really, really like colours. I like looking at them, playing with them, making them and stumbling upon which combinations come together to make something even more exciting than their constituent parts. It probably also comes as no surprise then, that when I saw Kassia St Clair’s ‘The Secret Lives of Colour’, I felt as though someone had written a book just for me.

astitchornine (7)

Read More »

Review: The Embroidery Stitch Bible

toomanystitches8 Comments

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you make purchases from this blog, I get a small commission. However, any recommendations and opinions are my own. For more information, please click here. 

One of the great things about the spread of the Internet has been the increasing accessibility of information on even the most niche of hobbies. This is great news for crafters for very obvious reasons, but with a growing number of wonderful Youtube tutorials and online stitch tutorials, is there any place left for a hardbound stitch bible?

1 (2)

Read More »

Review: Temari Jiwari and Color Magic 手まり地割りと色のマジック

toomanystitches2 Comments

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links meaning if you purchase the book through these links, I receive a small commission to help keep running the blog. However, any recommendations and opinions in this review are my own. For more information, please click here. 

capture.png

For those of you not familiar with temari, they are the wonderful embroidered balls that are often covered in mindboggling geometric designs or traditional Japanese motifs, such as cranes or 菊 (kiku), the chrysanthemum, often considered the national flower of Japan.

Read More »