New Embroidery Books

In an effort to stimulate the economy (i.e., due to lack of impulse control), I have been purchasing more embroidery items — books this time! Two new embroidery books arrived this past week, to my great delight. The first one to come was The Kew Book of Embroidered Flowers by Trish Burr:

I bought this one mainly because I want to improve my long and short stitching for needle painting. As mentioned in a prior post, I would like to do some needle painted leaves on a table runner I'm designing, but before I do the final piece, my skills in that area need some work.

Having looked through the book, I think I will find it very helpful. I just need to purchase some silk threads in a few shades of the same hue and start practicing. I have some extra fabric of the same type I'm using for the table runner, so I intend to practice needle painting leaves until I feel reasonably confident I can do them well enough to dignify the finished piece. I have some time for this endeavor, though, because until the large Millennium Frame I ordered arrives from England, I can't actually start the real piece.

The other book I bought was the Home Sweet Home: An Embroidered Workbox book by Carolyn Pearce:

I saw some ladies on Facebook who created this charming little sewing box, and I couldn't resist ordering the book. It took a month to get here (shipping from Australia is not speedy during a pandemic), and although I find the sewing box even more charming now that I've seen all the close-up photos, I must confess, making this seems more than a trifle daunting.

The materials list alone is enough to give me a mild panic attack. And although I have no intention whatever of using such a wide variety of threads and think I could get by relatively well with my stash for the actual embroidery, the list of other materials that have to be gathered feels rather exhausting.

Mary Alice, my JE tutor, and several of my JE classmates laughed when I told them I'd bought this book. Mary Alice told me that 30+ members of her EGA group took on this project, and only 17 of them finished. They all called it the $1000 shack because it cost so much money to get all the materials for such a tiny little sewing box.

I still do love the idea of it, but I think I'm going to have to file this one away for some later time. I have too many other works in progress or planned projects that are more feasible and that I've already committed to by purchasing the materials. So perhaps in a couple of years, when I have some spare cash, spare time, and an endless fount of ambition and construction savoir faire, I will come back to this. For now, the pictures really are lovely, and the sewing box is enchanting, even if it's destined to remain on the cover of the book for a long while.