Mary Gostelow's Embroidery

This book covers a lot of types of embroidery and I would say that you could learn the basics of almost any kind of embroidery in no time at all from it.

I was very impressed by the detail of the directions in this book. She seems to start with the assumption that the reader has no sewing experience, but in a no-nonsense way, so you don’t feel like the author thinks you are an idiot, but rather that you are a person new to the art and are truly interested learning this craft.

It has lots of diagrams showing the different stitches and for the more complicated ones there are step by step diagrams for completing the stitch.

I learned that there are more then one kind of cross stitch stitches, which really surprised me. I don’t do much embroidery but what I have done is cross stitch and I don’t ever recall seeing a pattern with anything but the basic cross stitch.

There are some simple projects in the book to give you something to start on, and some nice pictures of work both from when the book was published and historical items. Most pictures are in black and white, but there are a few color plates.

I liked it and am glad that I was able to find it and add it to my collection of sewing books.

DS ( )