Book Review: Plant Lady Embroidery

Plant Lady Embroidery: 300 Botanical Embroidery Motifs & Designs to Stitch is a reproduction of a Japanese book that was published by E&G Creates Company Limited. It has been translated to English. As the title indicates, it provides many beautiful embroidery motifs for stitching.

There are several designers for these motifs.
Roses   Shigeko Kawakami
orchids and chrysanthem --Tomiko Nakayama
spring flowers --Kazue Sakurai
summer flowers --Fumiko Saito (siesta)
autumn and winter flowers -- Tomoko Watanabe
flower branches --Kawako Nariko
fruit trees --mogu
herbs --Yasuko Shibata
wildflowers & mushrooms -- Yasuko Sebata
cacti & succulents -- Pocorute Pocochiru
tropical plants -- Sayuri Horiuchi
foliage plants -- Horiuchi Sayuri
aquatic plants -- Yumiko Iwata "Hanaotosya"
English Garden -- Yumiko Iwata

The first section has full-color photos of the motifs stitched by each designer with the name of the plant beside the photo.

Use the pattern number by the photo to find the pattern inside the book.

The book also offers basic directions on supplies, tracing the motif using dressmaker's carbon paper, and how to make the basic stitches that are used in the motifs, and a small number of ideas on how to use the motifs.

Most of the book has the pattern. On the left side the directions show which stitch to use while the right side shows the clean pattern without words or markings.

I really like the designs in this book and you will be seeing many of these designs in my quote quilt.

I would have liked the color photo closer to the motif, as I find the digital copy cumbersome to move back and forth from the front of the book to the back. It might just be my computer that made scrolling so slow. Even with a physical copy, though, it would be better to have the color copy closer to the pattern. Color makes such a big difference. I found some designs that made me go back to the color to see what it looked like so I was flipping back and forth several times to get the full understanding of the design.

I got a limited-time digital copy of this book from Net Galley.

Here are the book notes:

Plant Lady Embroidery

300 Botanical Embroidery Motifs & Designs to Stitch

by Applemints

Quarto Publishing Group – Quarry

Quarry Books

Pub Date 28 Apr 2020

Blue and White Quilts

I really enjoy two color quilts. Their crispness and simplicity really lets the pattern shine.  The editors of Red and White Quilts have written a new book with blue and white quilts.

Blue & White Quilts: 13 Remarkable Quilts with Timeless Appeal*  by That Patchwork Place offers beautiful traditional quilts, which means that you may have already seen these patterns, but they are beautiful and worth a second look. They are recreated using modern techniques.

The quilts are made by these designers:  Lissa Alexander, Lisa Bongean, Julie Hendricksen, Sherri McConnell, Camille Roskelley, Laurie Simpson, Helen Stubbings, Debbie Roberts, Jill Shaulis, Nancy Mahoney, Paula Barnes, and Mary Ellen Robison.

Because there are many different designers, it is worth reading the patterns to find different techniques to make the same block, to see which one you like.  Most of the quilts use simple techniques, but will take perseverance to make the multiple blocks.

Most of the quilts are pieced, but there is some applique.

 I really like this star.

 I also like using a dark background instead of a light background. The stars are on point. The pattern calls for making the flying geese using the stitch and flip method.

 Some blocks are bigger.

This applique and pieced quilt uses the four at a time flying geese method.

I received a review copy of Blue and White Quilts* from Edelweiss. It was published by That Patchwork Place on December 6, 2019 and is 96 pages.

*affiliate link

Sisterhood of Scraps

In A Sisterhood of Scraps*, Lissa Alexander compiles quilt patterns made by seven different designers:. Susan Ache, Kim Brackett, Barbara Brackman, Sheryl Johnson, Laurie Simpson, and Sandy Klop. The subtitle is 12 Brilliant Quilts From 7 Fantastic Designers. For some of them, she makes her own version of the quilts based on the theme. Although there are twelve quilts, some of them are quite similar.

The writing in the introduction and the biography of Lissa are more chatty and less formal than I am used to seeing in a quilt book, and lends a more casual feel to the book. There is a certificate in the back of the book to prove that you are a part of the sisterhood.

The quilts are renditions of traditional quilts, made with beautiful combinations of scrap fabrics.

This one is one of my favorites in the book.

I  received a review copy of Sisterhood of Scraps* from Edelweiss.

On Sale Date: January 6, 2020

ISBN 9781683560463, 1683560469

Paperback | 

96 pages

$27.99 USD

Crafts & Hobbies / Quilts & Quilting 

 

* affiliate link

Treasure Hunt: 13 Quilts Inspired by Antique Finds

In the first couple of chapters, Linda Collins and Leah Zieber give you advice about how to buy and take care of antique quilts.

The rest of the book showcase beautiful quilts and provide modern ways to recreate these vintage beauties.  There are lots of wonderful photographs of the quilts and step by step directions for making them. I found myself wanting to make almost all of them.

The book comes out January 6. I was honored to receive a review copy from Edelweiss.

Graphic Quilts From Everday Images

Graphic Quilts From Everyday Images is by Heather Schrimsher. The subtitle is 15 Patterns Inspired by Urban Life, Architecture, and Beyond. I'm sorry the photos have a yellow cast to them. I took them when the sun was out and used a cool light bulb so I'm not sure what happened, and this is the best the photo editing software could do. This photo is cool grays and blues and the photo doesn't do it justice.

It is published by Martingale using That Patchwork Place imprint. This one is my favorite quilt in the book. The orange leaves float on a deep plum background.

The book is divided into three sections. Enlarged Detail recommends focusing on enlarging a certain detail of photographs the author has taken.

The next section, Blocks and Repeats, plays with the details taken out of a photo.

The last section, Lines and Strips, focuses on the main elements of a photo or subject. This requires simplification to distill the most important part of the subject.
 

Full size templates are provided right with the pattern, and everything is kept together so you don't have to flip through the back to find them.

There a variety of patterns with a variety of complexity.  This one uses simple rectangles to create a great design.

There are also curved piecing. I like this one because it is so graphic and interesting with just a few curved seams. And they are big, so they shouldn't be too difficult to sew.

As I copied the Amazon link to the title at the top of the page, I see it is on sale for $14.99, and used copies are available for as little as $3.00.

Lunch-Hour Patchwork

Lunch-Hour Patchwork is published by Martingdale. The people at the publisher spend Wednesday lunches making a project, like these projects that are pretty quick to make.  The subtitle is 15 Easy-to-start (and finish!) projects. They don't promise that the projects will be finished in an hour, but they will fill an hour with fun and relaxation.
 

My favorite quilt in this book is this tiny trees project.  Since I haven't sewn my equilateral triangles together, I was somewhat surprised that they didn't sew this quilt in rows of equilateral triangles, alternated with stumps.  Instead each of the trees are made as a block, like the Christmas trees quilt I made. This is actually a quilt I am thinking about making.

Here's a page of some of the projects in this book. Most of the projects don't need templates but the few that do are printed, actual size, right on the pages themselves.

Since that page doesn't show everything, I decided to show you the table of contents too.

The Forgotten Seamstress

This is a book I reviewed on the Goodreads.

 The Forgotten Seamstress by Liz Trenow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed reading this book about a woman who was gifted an intriguing crazy quilt which led her to a search about the maker of the quilt. The book goes back and forth between two stories - a sociology student is interviewing a woman from an insane asylum who tells a far-fetched story about having a love-child with a member of the royal family, and the woman researching the quilt. The quilt goes through a little adventure of its own.

View all my reviews

Wabi-Sabi Sewing

A couple of books I have in my library stack need to be returned because someone has requested them. Wabi-Sabi Sewing by Karen Lewis is one of them. The subtitle is 20 sewing patterns for perfectly imperfect projects. It is published by sewandso company in the U.K.

They all look pretty perfect to me. I really like the soft aesthetic of this cover quilt on the bed. I also liked the hand sewing on the jeans in the background. Just some running stitches to decorate the jeans.

I liked this applique quilt too. It uses the Hawaiian style applique, but adds extra colors and shapes.  I like the blue color too.

The yellow and grays in this quilt made me think of Sunlight in Winter blog. The colors look more orange on my computer screen, but they are yellow in the original.

I really like this page that shows all of the projects in the book.

Books like these make me feel calm and relaxed just looking at them. 

My Library Stacks

I am following Tierney's library stacks and sharing my own.  Today, I have not one, not two, but three library stacks to share with you today.

The first stack are the books I checked out this week. To highlight a couple of books from this stack,  Journal Sparks and Joyful Daily Stitching are books I have checked out before. Journal Sparks gives lots of great ideas of writing in a journal, and also has lots of beautiful visuals.  The Drawing School is one I will be following to get over my fear of drawing. It is very basic, kindergarten level drawing, which is here I need to start. It has a large variety of drawings, with step by step directions on how to draw each one.

This picture may look like last week's picture, but it shows that I haven't returned my previous books.  I have an overflow! I also have one ebook, The Forgotten Seamstress, which is an interesting historical fiction.

Lastly, this stack is books I was able to pick up for sale at the library! I didn't go to the Friends of the Library Big Book sale because it is just so dangerous, but there were quilt books for sale at my local library.

 It is making me nervous that they are selling so many of the quilting books, but it looks like they are reducing their book stacks in general. Maybe more people are reading e-books or giving up on books altogether. Some of these books are pretty skinny, so I had to lay them out for you to see the titles.  A lot of books didn't have library labels though so maybe a quilter is just clearing out her excess.

Quilts from El's Attic is by Eleanor Burns, and Quilting Those Flirty 30s seems like it has a lot of interesting patterns. The Uffizi is paintings from an art gallery. I was going to get a children's book so I could cut out pictures for a junk journal, if I ever get around to making one, but chose this one instead because it is bigger for the same price, and has more variety of paintings. It doesn't have the cutesy factor a children's book would have, so we'll have to see if I can cut it up.

Library Shelf #1

Tierney Creates gives you a view of the books she got from the library and I thought I might do the same. Let me tell you first that I find that it is risky to tell you what I have, because then you might request it from the library and I won't be able to renew it if you are waiting for it.  I thought that maybe I could show you a stack of books I am returning, and then I won't have that problem, but that would be too hard for me to keep up, so you will just have to promise me not to ask my library for the book until I am finished with it.

I will review some of these books at a future date.

I am excited about this stack because I spent the day at the library on Saturday for a genealogy conference.  They had all these genealogy books ready for us to check out, but I was more excited about the quilting books I hadn't seen and grabbed as many as I could carry. This shelf in my house is reserved for library books.

No other books are allowed here so I don't return any of my own books. No, I can't carry all the books on that shelf; some of these books were already on my book shelf. We are allowed to check out 50 books at a time. There are books on cooking, psychology, art, and of course quilting. Most of the children's books have been returned. I got them for the pictures so I could practice drawing but I didn't get around to that before the books had to be returned.

The other exciting about this shelf is the shelf underneath the one you can see.  There is half a shelf full of books I got this year at library sales, at less than $2 a book. Most of those are quilting books, which I thought was bad news because maybe they are buying fewer quilting books, but the shelves at the main library was promising.

There is a big library book sale this weekend, but I should probably avoid it.