I have had this book for a long time, but I have only just read it (because of my new passion for EPP).
It is a beautiful book, her various projects are inspiring.
There is a chapter on the history of English Paper Piecing, little biographies of various artists, a section on supplies and how to do it, a section on fussy cutting, different rosettes (e.g. Holmwood rosette) and a quilt pattern.
I have read it from start to finish, and highly recommend it.
Filed under Book Review, Cricut, English Paper Piecing, Patchwork
I have frequently thought about a daily stitch journal.
That’s what this book is about. There are sections on setting your self up for the year, what you need in terms of supplies, some examples, and then pages of little motifs.
Like this one on weather.
If a journal is something you would like to tackle, then this book will be very handy. You could also use the little motifs for other embroidery projects.
Filed under Book Review
I have been obsessed by the Bayeux Tapestry for years, and I went to see it last year. I buy any books I can find about it – novels or non-fiction, and I have a reproduction I am working on. So clearly I had to read this one.
Here’s the blurb …
The story of the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry is arguably the most widely-known in the entire panoply of English history, and over the last 200 years there have been hundreds of books portraying the Tapestry and seeking to analyze its meanings. Yet, there is one aspect of the embroidery that has been virtually ignored or dismissed as unimportant by historians – the details in the margins.
Yet the fables shown in the margins are not just part of a decorative ribbon, neither are they discontinuous, but in fact follow-on in sequence. When this is understood, it becomes clear that they must relate in some way to the action shown on the body of the Tapestry. After careful examination, it has become clear that the purpose of these images is to amplify, elaborate or explain the main story.
In this groundbreaking study, Arthur Wright reveals for the first time the significance of the images in the margins. This has meant that it is possible to see the ‘whole’ story as never before, enabling a more complete picture of the Bayeux Tapestry to be constructed. This, in turn, has led to the author reexamining many of the scenes in the main body of the work, showing that a number of the basic assumptions, so often taught as facts, have been based on nothing more than reasoned conjecture.
It might be thought that after so much has been written about the Bayeux Tapestry there was nothing more to be said, but Decoding the Bayeux Tapestry shows us just how much there is still to be learned.
This provides background information about the time prior and after the Norman Conquest. Wright believes, like many historians, the tapestry was commissioned by Odo (William’s half-brother), but he thinks it has a different purpose – not commemorating William. He also discusses the friezes at the bottom and top of the tapestry, and how they add nuance to the main story. And finally he believes it was made by English men – former military men at that. I enjoyed looking at the tapestry and understanding its historical context.
A review
Filed under Book Review
I do like a book about knitting, emotional stuff, not instructions (although I like those as well). I think I came across this while looking at what else people bought when they bought Knitting Pearls (by Ann Hood) on Amazon.
Here’s the blurb …
In this lively, funny memoir, Peggy Orenstein sets out to make a sweater from scratch–shearing, spinning, dyeing wool–and in the process discovers how we find our deepest selves through craft. Orenstein spins a yarn that will appeal to everyone.
The Covid pandemic propelled many people to change their lives in ways large and small. Some adopted puppies. Others stress-baked. Peggy Orenstein, a lifelong knitter, went just a little further. To keep herself engaged and cope with a series of seismic shifts in family life, she set out to make a garment from the ground up: learning to shear sheep, spin and dye yarn, then knitting herself a sweater.
Orenstein hoped the project would help her process not just wool but her grief over the recent death of her mother and the decline of her dad, the impending departure of her college-bound daughter, and other thorny issues of aging as a woman in a culture that by turns ignores and disdains them. What she didn’t expect was a journey into some of the major issues of our time: climate anxiety, racial justice, women’s rights, the impact of technology, sustainability, and, ultimately, the meaning of home.
With her wry voice, sharp intelligence, and exuberant honesty, Orenstein shares her year-long journey as daughter, wife, mother, writer, and maker–and teaches us all something about creativity and connection.
I really enjoyed reading this – some chapters more than others (I was not so keen on the shearing chapter). I have put in a multiple of post-it flags and now I want to reread Women’s Work: The First 20 000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.
Learning to shear sheep during the pandemic seemed like a bit of a lark – a way to tap into the romance and resilience of an earlier age; to connect with something enduring when life had become so precarious […]
We are not a culture, to say the least, that venerates older women.
Lessons on food or thread weave us together across the warp of time, the weft of space.
I didn’t imagine how these ancient skills would deepen my awareness of women’s work or challenge my sense of place or home.
It makes sense to me that the designers of life would be female rather than male, as in the Judea-Christian tradition, and it seems especially appropriate that those goddesses would spin. Making something from nothing is the quintessential magic of women.
Craft can mean so many things depending on the context. It can be exploitative or liberatory, subsistence or luxury, rote or creative, an act of conformity or rebellion, of belonging or individuality.
After all, that proverbial ‘little old lady’ could well be an unrepentant cackler, a fearsome crone. Her innocuousness could be her superpower, allowing her to slip the bonds of feminine constraint.
This book is a memoir, a history and a feminist treatise. Even if you’re not a knitter, or into fibre arts, these is plenty to enjoy.
One thing though, I would have liked to have seen the jumper.
Filed under Book Review, Inspiration, Knitting
I have had this book for a very long time. I am not sure why I took so long to read it – it is a quick read with beautiful illustrations.
Here’s the description
From the costly velvets and furs worn by kings to the undyed wools and rough linens of the peasantry, the clothing worn by the various classes in the Middle Ages played an integral role in medieval society. In addition to providing clues to status, profession, or geographic origin, textiles were a crucial element in the economies of many countries and cities.
Much of what is known about medieval fashion is gleaned from the pages of manuscripts, which serve as a rich source of imagery. This volume provides a detailed look at both the actual fabrics and composition of medieval clothing as well as the period’s attitude toward fashion through an exploration of the illuminated manuscripts in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. The last portion of the book is dedicated to the depiction of clothing in biblical times and the ancient world as seen through a medieval lens. Throughout, excerpts from literary sources of the period help shed light on the perceived role and function of fashion in daily life. The book accompanied an exhibition of the same name that was on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from May 31 to August 14, 2011.
It is beautifully illustrated, for example
If you’re interested in textiles, fashion, or manuscripts, then this book will interest you.
Filed under Book Review
In preparation for my trip to England, Scotland and France to see tapestries, I bought this book.
It is a beautiful book with many coloured photographs.
Here’s the blurb …
Woven with dazzling images from history, mythology and the natural world, and breath-taking in their craftsmanship, tapestries were among the most valuable and high-status works of art available in Europe from the medieval period to the end of the eighteenth century. Over 600 historic examples hang in National Trust properties in England and Wales – the largest collection in the UK.
This beautifully illustrated study by tapestry expert Helen Wyld, in association with the National Trust, offers new insights into these works, from the complex themes embedded in their imagery, to long-forgotten practices of sacred significance and ritual use. The range of historical, mythological and pastoral themes that recur across the centuries is explored, while the importance of the ‘revival’ of tapestry from the late nineteenth century is considered in detail for the first time. Although focussed on the National Trust’s collection, this book offers a fresh perspective on the history of tapestry across Europe.
Both the tapestry specialist and the keen art-history enthusiast can find a wealth of information here about woven wall hangings and furnishings, including methods of production, purchase and distribution, evolving techniques and technologies, the changing trends of subject matter across time, and how tapestries have been collected, used and displayed in British country houses across the centuries.
This is an amazing achievement by Helen Wyld. Academic, comprehensive but easy to read.
It has four chapters:
And there is a section at the start on the different techniques. At the end there is a comprehensive section on notes and a bibliography.
The illustrations are fabulous (there are even some double paged images).
The things on the walls are tapestries made to look like silk, a frame and a tapestry.
If you are at all interested in historic tapestries, then you will love this book.
Filed under Book Review, Tapestry
I bought this book solely for the cover. I thought it might be a history of the world as explained by silk production and distribution, but it is not that at all. It is about the creatures that make silk; silkworms, molluscs and spiders.
There is not just one story of silk. In silk is science, history and mythology. In silk is the future.
Aarathi Prasad’s Silk is a gorgeous new history weaving together the story of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia.
Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global history, natural history, and future of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia.
For silk, prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its potential. As the technologies it has inspired – from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms – continue to be developed in laboratories around the world, they are now also beginning to offer a desperately needed, sustainable alternative to the plastics choking our planet.
Prasad’s Silk is a cultural and biological history from the origins and ancient routes of silk to the biologists who learned the secrets of silk-producing animals, manipulating the habitats and physiologies of moths, spiders and molluscs. Because there is more than one silk, there is more than one story of silk. More than one road, more than one people who discovered it, and wove its threads.
From the moths of China, Indonesia and India to the spiders of South America and Madagascar, to the silk-producing molluscs of the Mediterranean, Silk is a book rich in the passionate connections made by women and men of science to the diversity of the animal world. It is an intoxicating mix of biography, intellectual history and science writing that brings to life the human obsession with silk.
I found it fascinating. I had no idea that there was more than one type of silkworm – India has several different types and a thriving silk industry, which is as old as the chinese silk industry. And the sea creatures that make silk! Although, they are now almost extinct after several catastrophic events. And finally, the spiders. Who knew spiders could be ‘silked’ and that their silk is amazing – strong and thin with anti-bacterial properties? And unlike both silkworms and molluscs, the spider doesn’t need to die to harvest the silk.
Silk might be the miracle we need to save the world. It can be used instead of plastic. Although no one has yet been able to make farming spider silk commercially viable. One experiment involved putting spider DNA into goats and harvesting silk protein from the milk. However, they couldn’t turn the silk protein into silk thread. Putting spider DNA into silkworms was much more successful, but still not ideal.
Filed under Book Review
This book is a beautiful object – the dust cover is lovely. It was languishing in my pile for quite some time. It is well worth reading, part exploration of different types of fabric (Barkcloth, cotton, linen, silk, wool, polyester) and part grief memoir. Ms Finlay travels widely to research different fabrics and adds personal anecdotes about her family, in particular her mother her died unexpectedly and with whom she had planned on doing some of this travel.
Here’s the blurb …
A magnificent work of original research, unwinding history through cloth –how we make it, use it and what it means to us.
From our earliest ancestors to babies born today, fabric is a necessary part of our everyday lives, but it’s also an opportunity for creativity, symbolism, culture and connection. Travelling across the world and bringing history to life, bestselling author Victoria Finlay investigates how and why people have made and used cloth.
A century ago in Wales, women would sew their own funeral clothes over tea with friends. In Papua New Guinea, bark is stripped from trees and beaten into cloth. Harris Tweed has a particular smell, while Guatemalan weavers use dazzling colours. Uncovering the stories of the fabrics people wear and use from sacking to silk, Fabric combines science, history, tradition and art in a captivating exploration of how we live, work, craft and care.
It is beautifully written and there are photographs.
A review
Filed under Book Review
I like the publications from KDD (Kate Davies Designs). I think I have all of them. Their publications are beautiful; lovely designs and beautiful photography (like the one below).
This one has a series of essays on various aspects of Davaar, and then the patterns.
There are 10 patterns; things like a hat, cardigan, scarf/shawl, etc.
I am quite keen to make the Iola cardigan (on the one on the cover) and maybe use a variation of this stitch pattern on a sock
If you are a knitter, her patterns are beautiful and interesting, it’s definitely worth trying one.
Filed under Book Review, Knitting, Knitting - Colour work, Sock Knitting
This book is great. It contains very useful information. The focus is on why and then the how just happens. The structure of each stitch is described; knit, purl, m1l, k2tog, etc, and then there is information about how to improve each stitch. There is information on joining a new ball (always at the start of a row? maybe not), stitching pieces together, casting on and off, and shaping.
There is a great discussion on gauge and why we should all be knitting a swatch and then how to use your swatch to modify the pattern to suit your gauge.
I bought the Kindle version, but on my Kindle Oasis, the images were missing. However, when I used the Kindle app on my Ipad the images were there. Just something to be aware of when purchasing the e-book.
It is definitely something I will refer to in the future.
Filed under Book Review, Knitting
