Book Review: Ask Erica

Book Review: Ask Erica

Author: Erica Wilson

Date: 1977

Publisher: Scribner

ISBN: 0-684-15296-7

Length: 128 pages

Illustrations: several drawings and charts

Quote: “If you’re a beginner, I hope Ask Erica will become your ‘first reader.’ If you’re an expert, I hope you’ll find some...new angle of vision.”

What people asked Erica about, from the 1960s through the 1990s, was needlework. This book is a collection of her answers.

Ask Erica discusses techniques other than knitting, crochet, and tatting. Wilson studied those too, but in this book the needles have eyes. Topics include Algerian Eyelet stitch, appliqué, backgrounds, back of canvas, backstitch, bargello, bedspreads, blackwork, and so on.

If you’re a complete beginner to all needlework, this book can help you learn the vocabulary and remember the techniques you’ve been shown. It’s not really organized to start you stitching, although a really determined beginner could probably design projects using only the brief explanations in Ask Erica. It’s more of a reference book.

If you’ve done some needlework and would like to learn new techniques you can use to make something more individual and complicated than the kits at the dime store, Ask Erica is for you. No pictures of things other people have made, just diagrams of new methods you can use to make the pictures and textures that suit you.

For stitchers as for knitters and crocheters, actually forming the patterns is much easier than remembering how many of them are available to you and how each one is made. I see Ask Erica as most likely to be helpful to a fairly adept embroiderer and beginning designer. There are prettier coffee-table books on needlework techniques (American Needlework has never had much serious competition) and there are fatter books with more diagrams of fancy stitches, but this one is a purse-sized, even coat-pocket-sized, carry-along book you the needleworker can use to remind yourself exactly how you made that knot or flower-petal effect when you’re ready to make the next one like it.

I’d made samples of most of these types of needlework (not all) before I took the plunge into knitting. If I hadn’t committed my time, money, and storage space to knitting, I would probably still have uses for Ask Erica. If eyed needles fit into your hands the way knitting needles fit into mine, this sturdy, library-bound, carry-around book will serve you well.

 

Book Review: Piecework January 1998

Title: Piecework January 1998

Editor: Linda Ligon

Publisher: Interweave Press

Date: 1998

ISBN: none

Length: 80 pages

Quote: “In this issue, we explore the craft traditions of waterbound places.”

For some of the traditional handcrafts—weaving, embroidery, knitting, quilting, basketry—in some years, in our Machine Age, an industry develops. Shops and magazines are devoted entirely to the crafts that are fashionable enough to support these enterprises. Books are published. Clubs, with conventions and even competitions, are organized. Classes are taught for college credit. Meanwhile, other crafts languish in the shadows and receive little attention until the restless currents of fashion move on in search of something “new.” In the 1970s, when weaving was “in,” knitting was derided. In the 1990s, when knitting boomed, Knitter’s magazine sold widely while its publishers’ other venture, Weaver’s magazine, was never in stores. Meanwhile, does anyone else remember macramé?

Piecework magazine was the production of some people who recognized the deep silliness of these fads. If you really enjoy a craft, you continue wanting to do it whether it’s in or out of fashion. Piecework offered something for everybody. It was not a dabbler’s magazine; the articles were too scholarly and the projects too advanced. (While knitting magazines were bowing to the market for thick yarns that knitted up at 3 stitches to the inch, Piecework continued to print patterns to be knitted with traditional yarns and needles that knitted up at 8 or 9 stitches to the inch…and if you were not a specialist with serious money to spend, good luck finding those yarns.) Piecework was a magazine for serious crafters of all kinds. The magazine didn’t have room to feature every craft every month but they had something for everybody in every year.

So, in this issue, what you’ll see are gorgeous full-color photos of museum pieces and prize winners, an occasional landscape, and an occasional face, from Haiti, Australia, Greece, Guam, Wales, the Faroe Islands, the Maritime Provinces, and Japan. In the same order, the crafts featured are beading (“Sequined Flags of Haiti”), embroidery, weaving/embroidery, basketry, quilting, knitting, rug hooking, and kitemaking. What you’ll find detailed instructions for making are embroidered flower motifs, a “whole-cloth quilt” where the focus is on stitching rather than patching, a knitted shawl, and a hooked rug. Beaders, basket makers, and kite makers will have to draw their inspiration from the pictures.

Because the articles focus on craft history—usually specific stories, as, in this issue, the story of two needle artists who signed up for a twenty-year competition and competed so exclusively against each other that others petitioned to have them dropped from the group—they are evergreen. If you like reading stories about a particular craft, looking at pictures of masterpieces, and at least considering a pattern for something in that general style of your craft, you might happily collect as many as two-thirds of all the Piecework magazines ever printed. Like National Geographic or Birds and Blooms, these magazines would be perfect for waiting rooms.

If you’re more of a specialist, you might want to know: The embroidery is “shadow” embroidery, featuring effects produced by carefully stringing colored floss across sheer white fabric so that the shadow of the floss at the back shows between the stitches at the front. The quilt is worked from an elaborate design of flowers, leaves, and hearts, which you copy onto fabric, first with a pencil and then with matching thread; it’s all about textures, in white or one color. The shawl is worked at 5.5 stitches to the inch in Icelandic lace-weight wool; you could get the same gauge with a pound of Bernat “baby” acrylic yarn, and make a nice shawl for someone who refuses to own wool, but at some time in their lives everyone should get a chance to feel the softness of all-natural wool from a brown, black, or gray sheep. The rug must be made with real wool; the hooking technique used, though certainly easy and fast, relies on wool’s natural tendency to mat to hold the rug together. (Latch hooking would be more reliable, and would allow you to use mixed materials if you really wanted to; it would not be traditional, because the traditional rug hookers were turning bags of rags into something to wipe muddy boots on, so who had time to latch the loops? They had wool fabric; they let it mat together.)

The quality of the eye candy in all issues of Piecework was consistently high. The articles always left people wanting to know more…which was the point. Piecework was the bimonthly magazine of a publishing house that specialized in craft books. If you wanted more information, Linda Ligon could always recommend a book. Most books cited in Piecework were advertised in the same issue of Piecework, and some of those books may still be available in libraries or at specialized craft shops.

Book Review: (A Handbook of) American Crewel Embroidery

Title: (A Handbook of) American Crewel Embroidery 



Author: Muriel L. Baker

Date: 1966

Publisher: Charles E. Tuttle

ISBN: none

Length: 67 pages

Illustrations: many drawings and black-and-white photos

Quote: "While mounds sometimes occupied only a small part of the whole design...they other times formed the whole base of the design. Very often the latter was the case with petticoat borders."

Crewel embroidery is defined as embroidery done with relatively thick "crewel wools, which are slackly twisted two-ply worsted yarns," rather than fine cotton thread or silk floss. Historically, this relatively fast and cheap kind of embroidery was often used for very fancy "painting with yarn" effects. Crewel is not unlike drawing and painting--it can be used to make simple line doodles, or elaborate three-dimensional pictures with subtly shaded colors.

Baker found dozens of garments, linens, purses, chair cushions, and framed pictures that were not only attractive enough to be preserved in museums, but also clear enough to be documented in black-and-white photos. This limits her selection to relatively simple colorwork.

She explains briefly how the basic embroidery stitches are formed, and provides clear, traceable templates for embroidering birds, flowers, animals and even a mermaid in the sizes and styles found on the museum pieces dating back to the eighteenth century. No templates are provided for motifs used in the more recent pieces, which might still have been considered subject to copyright.

This attractive little book was successful enough in its day that it's still available for its original price, or even less, so you may buy it here for our minimum price of $5 per book + $5 per package. Although Muriel Baker no longer needs a dollar, we can probably squeeze four or five Fair Trade Books into the package, which may make this price quite competitive.

Book Review: Stitching Pretty

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Stitching Pretty

Editor: Carol Field Dahlstrom

Editor's web page: http://carolfielddahlstrom.com

Publisher: Meredith

Illustrations: color photos and charts

Date: 2002

ISBN: 0-696-21526-8

Length: 168 pages

Quote: “Whether you are looking for a floral wedding sampler, a heart-filled motif...or a sentimental verse...you are sure to find a new favorite here.”

Here are 41 charted patterns for cross-stitching. (When the front cover says “101 projects,” they're counting various small pieces worked from one chart and discussed as one project.) As shown, most are designed to be framed and hung on the wall; there are also patterns for decorating pillows and napkins, for a greeting card, for decorating little boxes, for a bookmark, and for adorable little tags to sew into handmade gifts. If you have ever wanted to identify a child's camp gear with professional-looking stitched-down silk tags, this book will show you how.

What is cross-stitched can also be knitted, although knitted stitches seldom form perfect squares and the shapes of pictorial designs may be distorted in un-lifelike ways. Cross-stitching charts can also be adapted to crocheting, weaving, drawing, painting, and many other crafts. However, most of these designs are large and complicated enough that they'll probably look their best in cross stitch.

This book is for the cross-stitch artist who's ready to move beyond kits, still willing to be guided by charts and color suggestions but also willing to start mixing colors, materials, and motifs on her or his own. The designs include a fruit basket surrounded by flowers, a pair of early-twentieth-century sisters, a large teddy bear reading a story to a small teddy bear, a rooster, a church, lovebirds, various combinations of hearts and flowers, mottos, a bride and a bridegroom, birdhouses, bouquets, a flower shop, a hatbox, houses, and a lighthouse. “Traditional” is a good word. You've not seen these exact designs in Gifte Shoppes in tourist towns, but that's the sort of market to which you could sell them at a charity bazaar.

Stitching Pretty is a good name for it; this is a pretty book. To buy it online here, send salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com $10 per book + $5 per package (two copies would cost you $25), and we'll send Dahlstrom or a charity of her choice $1.50 per book (two copies would give her/them $3).

Book Review: The Machine Embroidery Handbook

Title: The Machine Embroidery Handbook

        
Author: D.J. Bennett

        
Date: 1997

        
Publisher: Lark Books

        
ISBN: 1-887374-45-0

        
Length: 128 pages including index, graphics, and many full-color photos

        
Quote: “Somewhere along the line, some creative person noticed that certain patches added distinction and interest to a plain piece of fabric.”

        
That was how appliqué, the first decorative machine-stitching technique discussed here, was born. The author recommends that you make a sample of each technique, as you read this book, in order to understand the technique and move on to  the next. From appliqué the book goes on through fabric manipulation (piecing, slashing, padding), cutwork, needle lace, coloring (with melted crayons, with ink, with paint or dye, with bleach), embellishing cloth with plastic, layering sheer fabrics, making collages with found and recycled objects, and even making jewelry with clay.

        

Even if there’s no room for a sewing machine in your life, this book is still lovely eye candy; pictures are sure to suggest things you could do in your chosen craft. If you have a sewing machine and want to embroider with it, you will enjoy this book.

It's more inspiration than detailed explanation...then again, if you play with a sewing machine often, pictures are probably enough to explain new things you may want to try doing with it.

Is The Machine Embroidery Handbook a Fair Trade Book? I suspect that it should be, but it's hard to find out, because a web search makes no distinction between the athlete D.J. Bennett, the novelist D.J. Bennett, and the author of this book. The best we can do with an online price for The Machine Embroidery Handbook will be $5 for the book + $5 for shipping. If you send this amount to salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com I'll send Lark Books a real letter to find out more about D.J. Bennett and/or her/his favorite charity, who will be eligible to collect $1 out of that $10. 

Book Review: Fun Embroidery for Kids' Stuff

Title: Fun Embroidery for Kids’ Stuff

        
Author: Irene Fackler

        
Date: 1998

        
Publisher: Madeira / Urania-Ravensburger t Dornier Medienholding

        
ISBN: none

        
Length: 63 pages of text and illustrations, plus folded pattern insert

        
Quote: “In this book you will find ideas for making clothing and textile accesso­ries for children, and how to enliven them with appliqué and embroidery.”

        
Madeira is a manufacturer of sewing supplies; after seeing a pile of embroidered children’s things next to the introduction, you will next see an assortment of colorful threads, including metallic thread and multicolored thread. Then there’s an introduction to iron-on and wash-out interfacings, needles and hoops, and the Madeira Magic Pen, which is used to draw lines that will disappear in a few hours, making the finished product look as if you’d literally drawn a picture with a sewing machine. Then, after a short note on techniques, the author starts explaining how to sew and embroider things made from the patterns given in the insert.

        
Then, at last, we enter that terribly cute nursery world where the cartoon characters roam, plain white summer gear gets bands of multicolored embroidery, and it’s perfectly safe to make backpacks out of dress fabric because children that size aren’t likely to try to carry anything too heavy to be toted round in scraps from a cotton shirt. Measurements are calculated using the metric system, then converted to inches. Some words are used in European ways, as when a bath mitt made out of towelling is identified as a “Flannel.” 

        
In addition to the little shirts and dresses you expected, this book also explains how to make a not very realistic “strawberry tote bag,” a helicopter fan’s backpack with a real propeller that could be made to turn, key tags and brooches to go with everything, and a big quilted “book” on whose “pages” tots can practice buttoning, zipping, snapping, braiding, and tying bows.

        

How to tell whether you need this book: Look through a store copy with your favorite children. (Garments are designed to fit average-built children about three and a half feet tall.) If they like the finished products, the book is for you. If they’ve outgrown either the garments or the embroidery patterns, leave this book for someone else, as it doesn’t offer much guidance on ways to adapt the projects.

Should Fun Embroidery for Kids' Stuff be a Fair Trade Book? Google isn't helping us determine this. Apparently "Irene Fackler" is one of those names, like "Priscilla King," that doesn't sound as if it would be terribly common but is in fact used by several different people. The Irene Fackler who wrote this book was not young at the time. At least two Irene Facklers of what might be her age have died since the book was published. I don't know, at the time of writing, whether the author can benefit from the Fair Trade Books program or not. In any case, the best price we can offer for Fun Embroidery for Kids' Stuff online is $10 for the book + $5 for shipping. If you're buying a Fair Trade Book from this web site (salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com) you can probably fit this slender book into the same package and pay only one $5 shipping charge. If not, check around, you might find a better price. If you do buy it here, we will mail a real letter to the publisher and ask them whether Irene Fackler might still have a use for $1.50.