Weekend Review: Hand-Stitched Oasis

 

Hand-Stitched Oasis / Theresa M. Lawson
Concord, CA: C&T, c2024.
128 p.

I recently found this newer book in my library, and I loved it. The author has an Instagram account where she shares a lot of work, and this book shows some of her secrets to her beautiful pieces. 

I found this to be well laid out, with lots of useful information and lots of great photos, both of the steps to the techniques she shares, and of some finished projects. The focus on the book is on sharing both how to create your own embroidery pattern from your own photos, and the stitches and techniques to use to get the realistic effects you're after. To this end there are only a few complete projects included at the end, if you want to try out her techniques without creating the pattern yourself - it's much more exciting to use her instructions on how to make a cherished image into a design! 

This is not an approach I've seen often, and the section on how to design something is quite complete, sharing all the steps from choosing a good image to altering it into a stitchable design, as well as how to choose background fabrics and good stitches to use for whichever effect you'd like. She talks about some of her designs to illustrate what she means, and I found a bunch of new ideas here. 

There are 35 techniques covered, from using varied base cloths, to painting the backgrounds to begin and then stitching on top, to using layered stitches to make new effects. There is a stitch guide included and I thought that was also clear and useful. 

I liked the style of her stitching; the varied stitches and open designs appeal to me. They feel quite natural, with variety in the number of strands she's using and a great eye for colour. The textures and colours really worked together well to create an artistic piece, in my opinion, and hopefully that's something you can pick up as you work on your own designs using her process. I had to return this as there was someone else interested in it as well, but I really wanted to keep it longer! I may have to buy myself a copy to work through all the steps and see what comes of it. I was impressed :) 

all photos via C&T Publishing