The Open Canvas

This is a fascinating book about many different kinds of canvas-work embroidery where your either leave open spaces by pulling threads together or remove threads from the canvas ground to leave open spaces to work in. The biggest problem with the book is that each chapter is set up as a sampler of the particular kind of work being discussed. It's not entirely clear to me how to use the book if you don't actually want to do the samplers.

The open canvas has good illustrations and is a helpful resource. Unfortunately it also has some flaws. The worse offense is that it was published so that the spine was not strong enough to hold such a large number of pages. Unfortunately I didn't like any of the projects either. The illustrations are clear and the subject is thoroughly represented. The author also includes reticello and hedebo, which is not often represented in needle work books.

I remember buying this because it was the book everyone was talking about. I couldn't see why then, and in spite of getting little use, it is falling apart now. The stitch diagrams are typical of the time. Computer graphics have improved a lot since then. Time to reclaim the shelf space.

Lending

Lending

Reference