Joyful Daily Stitching - Seam by Seam

The book contains everything you need to get going…The inspiring examples used throughout are vibrant and fun. This form of creativity is very portable, so you will be able to work anywhere and before you know it, your piece will take shape beautifully.

If you want your crazy quilt projects to look their best you need some innovative and eye-catching ways of decorating your seams. This book contains 500 of them to inspire you to find time to do some stitching every day.

Of course, you don’t have to want to decorate crazy quilt seams to delve into this book for some beautiful stitch combinations. Two-thirds of the book is devoted to those 500 patterns, but before you get to that there is a wealth of other information for the hand embroiderer. This includes a section showing most of the hand embroidery stitches you are likely to need plus variations, many including beads and ribbon. Each stitch is shown in several good-sized photographs with detailed captions for a pretty foolproof result. I was impressed throughout the book on the pretty color scheme of green, pink and purple and combined with pale fabric each photograph shows the stitch very visibly. Before this is a short section on basic crazy quilting methods plus other useful tips, but the bulk of the book is devoted to those beautiful seam decorations. These are arranged in stitch families, so you can easily find what you want if you have a stitch in mind you want to design your seam around. As well as old favorites such as back stitch, lazy daisy and French knots there are stitches based around beads, ribbons and even some embroidered motifs. For ease of use each pattern has a list of stitches used underneath, and the detailed index at the beginning ensures you can find what you want quickly. Although all the stitches are shown in detail for beginners it is the slightly more experienced embroiderer who will get the most out of the combination stitch section. At the front are two small photographs of crazy quilts, but apart from that no other images of them are present which is a bit of a shame. However, this book shows one aspect of hand embroidery very well indeed, namely decorative seams.

Valerie Bothell is a long-time crazy quilting teacher and author who looks forward to every opportunity to share her love of crazy quilting.