Bible of Sewing Techniques for Home Decor: Design Ideas and Essential Skills for Stylish and Professional Results

Description

Save money and stamp your own personal style on your home with this complete resource of techniques for designing, cutting, and stitching soft furnishings. Easy-to-follow step-by-step illustrations explain a range of essential home sewing techniques from estimating yardage, preparing fabric and making patterns for curtains and cushions, to hemming, stitching seams, making bias binding, using fusible web, linings and interfacing. Learn all the essential hand a machine stitches, as well as how to add zips and buttonholes, decorative edges, piping, ruffles, frills, and pleats and tucks. And there is a stunning collection of cushion and curtain designs to inspire you. Whether you're creating for your own home or sewing as a business, this will be an invaluable resource for your library.

Ruth Singer is a textile designer-maker specialising in hand-embellished textiles for fashion and interiors. She designs and makes fashion and interior accessories and bespoke home textiles including curtains and hangings, using traditional hand techniques with recycled and organic fabrics. Her work includes pleating, applique, layering, and folding to create rich embellished and sculptural effect in fabric.Ruth has exhibited her work widely in the UK and in 2006 was selected as sone of the best new designer makers of the year by the British Crafts Council. Ruth originally trained in museum studies, with the intention of being a costume curator to indulge her love of historic clothing. She worked in museum education for several years, most recently at the V&A as adult education officer and now combines her business with freelance teaching and writing.

Save money and stamp your own personal style on your home with this complete resource of techniques for designing, cutting and stitching soft furnishings. Easy to follow step-by-step illustrations explain a range of essential home sewing techniques from estimating yardage, preparing fabric and making patterns for curtains and cushions, to hemming, stitching seams, making bias binding, using fusible web, linings and interfacing. Learn all the essential hand and machine stitches, as well as how to add zips and buttonholes, decorative edges, piping, ruffles, frills, pleats and tucks. There's a stunning collection of cushion and curtain designs to inspire and whether you are creating for your own home or sewing as a business, this will be an invaluable resource.-Machine Knitting Monthly The subtitle for this useful book is "Design ideas and essential skills for stylish and professional results" and this is a good description of what you can find in here. Make a whole houseful of window treatments, bed and table linen, cushions and more as well as learning about your sewing machine and what it can do. I love the way this book starts with a guide on how to use it, and how the pages are laid out to enable you to get the most out of them. The first chapter is all about the tools you will need, not just for sewing but also things like curtain poles, pillow bats, various tapes and pelmet boards to name a few. The next chapter is all about the stitches you need to know about and when to use them, seams, hems and methods unique to this type of work such as lead weights. Then it is on with the projects; there are a lot of these, guidelines on how to make all kinds of practical and pretty things for the home. Measurements are not always given as these are going to be different every time, but everything else is and in as few steps as possible so nothing looks too daunting to tackle. There is always a combination of words, diagrams and photographs as well as skill level number, what you need and anything else you need to know. There is a chapter on decorative details such as tassels, pipings, etc and another of designs for curtains, blinds, valances, cushions etc and how skilled you need to be to make them, what fabric to use and how to measure up. Finally there is a directory of fabrics, their care and uses and how to handle them when making up. There is a glossary and list of fabric manufacturers' headquarters as well as where to buy hardware, trimmings and more some of which are in the UK and others in the US, plus websites and sewing magazines. This is a fairly exhaustive book as you can tell, and I haven't seen a better one on this subject - highly recommended for telling you what you need to know directly and simply.-Myshelf.com Ruth is a textile designer-maker specialising in hand embellished textiles for fashion and interiors. In 2006 she was selected as one of the best new designer-makers of the year by the British Crafts Council. So here is the work of an expert and everything from curtains, to cushions, from bed to table linen is here. It's a well illustrated book with diagrams and being spiral bound makes it easy to use by the sewing machine. The Design Directory at the back shows many different examples of curtains, pelmets and cushions and is followed by an interesting Fabric Directory. If you are decorating your home, then this book would be an ideal one to have handy and you can of course add your own personal touch with the addition of applique or embroidery.-Fabrications Almighty help for home makes. Comprehensive, clear and sensible, this is the book to have by your side when making curtains, blinds, bed linen, table linen and cushions. There are colour-filled illustrations and diagrams on every page which make the step by step techniques understandable (they're also graded by difficulty level), and there's also essential information on stitches, tools and materials, a useful explanation of different types of fabric, and a design directory which helps you choose the right window treatment to make. Invaluable.-AllAboutYou.com