Needle Weaving Techniques for Hand Embroidery

Description

Over 40 needle weaving techniques and patterns in one handy stitch book by renowned embroiderer Hazel Blomkamp. Working from numerous traditional loom weaving graphs and patterns, Hazel Blomkamp has updated, modified and documented 42 techniques, providing you with the basic weaving methods needed to create stunning embroidered pieces. Beginning with general information and tips on the weaving technique, Hazel's book then dives straight into the stitches, which she breaks down into detailed, helpful steps. Each weaving pattern is accompanied by a clear diagram and at least one photographed example of one of Hazel's beautiful woven pieces, giving you that extra visual reference as you work. All the stitches have been detailed on one side of the page only, allowing you to place your magnetic cross-stitch board underneath. You can then use the magnetic rulers that come with the board to mark the row that you are working on, making the instructions easier to follow. The spine is wire-bound, allowing the pages to lie flat while you work, and the book's notebook-size fits perfectly in a work bag for easy transportation while stitching on the go. With all the stitches needed for needle weaving embroidery at their fingertips, both new and experienced embroiderers will find inspiration from this invaluable resource.

Hazel Blomkamp has dabbled with all the needlecrafts since childhood. When her children were babies she developed a passion for embroidery to break the tedium of life with toddlers, using it as her evening reward for having got though the day with her sanity intact. Her children are now young adults and she still embroiders in front of the television every night. She has been designing for the past 18 years. Preferring to design projects which appear to be traditional, she pushes the boundaries by introducing other forms of needlecraft into traditional techniques, exploring further in everything that she does. Along with designing, she runs a busy website from home. She teaches at her home studio, in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, and travels throughout South Africa and to Australia teaching embroidery and fine beadwork. She is a regular contributor to South African and Australian embroidery magazines and is a columnist for the South African Stitches Magazine.

If you haven't seen needle weaving and fancied a go at it but wondered how it was done, this book is for you. This book is easy to work from because it has a spiral spine and stays obligingly flat while you get to grips with the projects. I say projects but the forty patterns in here are the needle weaving equivalent of embroidery stitches and you will need an application for them. If you are a total beginner to the rich and involving world of embroidery this would not be a good place to start, but if you are more experienced and want to fill spaces with interesting textures there are plenty in here. All are variations of the same simple weaving technique which uses a needle instead of a shuttle, and are not hard to master. The book opens with a page of tips and basic information, how to get started and read the patterns. Have a go first at single weaving with one thread, progress to double and then a combination of the two before trying out some more involved patterns. These are checks and stripes in the main to start, but then you can progress to some more complex and larger patterns. One of these includes musical notes, while others have a texture to them and there are also some flat braids to make for edgings. I remember making one of these for a hair band when I was a child so they can be quite versatile. Each pattern is shown in color with warp and weft threads differing for easy reading; written instructions are kept to a minimum and can easily be worked out. They use a simple code (eg 02, U1 = go over the first two stitches, go under the next one) and have a table showing how many threads you need of each color and how amny rows until you repeat the pattern. Each pattern also shows a couple of small inset photographs of how the pattern can be used. A useful book that got the point quickly and soon had me weaving away like a pro! -- Rachel A Hyde * myshelf.com * About the Search Press edition: The wire binding allows the book to lie flat on open on your work table, so that you can easily reference the book while you're stitching. This type of binding allows for printing on the spine, so that it's easy to see the title of the book while it's on the shelf, but it offers all the convenience of a wire-bound book, when it comes to using the book. The books are hard board covers with a glossy finish. They're very sturdy, and they're small enough to slip into a project back or basket for easy reference. On the new editions, you'll find that only one side of each two-page spread is printed, so that there's a blank page to the left each time you turn the page. While it's tempting to write this off as wasted space in the printed books, in fact, if you're using instructional books as a work book, there's nothing better than blank pages. This is where you can take notes on things that work (or don't work) for you while practicing the techniques, and where you can work out your own stitch patterns and save them for future reference. I've always been a fan of having at least one blank page in instructional books, for note-taking. Since most books don't have blank pages in them, I resort to an inordinate amount of post-it notes, which are never really permanent, and can be hard to keep track of. With blank pages throughout these two books, you can truly treat them like work books, with the instruction on one side and room to note your own experiences and experiments on the other. -- From Needle n Thread by Mary Corbet, full review: https: //www.needlenthread.com/2017/10/needle-weaving-needle-lace-techniques-bookish-stuff.html and https: //www.needlenthread.com/2016/01/needle-weaving-techniques-for-hand-embroidery.html -- Mary Corbet * Mary Corbet Needle n Thread *