Learn quilting basics from a YouTube sensation and practice your skills with 12 fun projects suitable for all skill levels. Her instructional videos have inspired thousands to start sewing. Now for the first time, sew-lebrity Laura Coia shares written patterns for the most loved video tutorials on her “Sew Very Easy” YouTube channel! Learn the basics of quilt making, from cutting and pressing to borders and finishing. Then practice your skills with a dozen beautiful projects—quilts you’ll come back to time and time again—all suitable for beginners and beyond.

In 1837, while charting the Amazonian country of Guiana for Great Britain, German naturalist Robert Schomburgk discovered an astounding "vegetable wonder"--a huge water lily whose leaves were five or six feet across and whose flowers were dazzlingly white. In England, a horticultural nation with a mania for gardens and flowers, news of the discovery sparked a race to bring a live specimen back, and to bring it to bloom. In this extraordinary plant, named Victoria regia for the newly crowned queen, the flower-obsessed British had found their beau ideal. In The Flower of Empire, Tatiana Holway tells the story of this magnificent lily, revealing how it touched nearly every aspect of Victorian life, art, and culture. Holway's colorful narrative captures the sensation stirred by Victoria regia in England, particularly the intense race among prominent Britons to be the first to coax the flower to bloom. We meet the great botanists of the age, from the legendary Sir Joseph Banks, to Sir William Jackson Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to the extravagant flower collector the Duke of Devonshire. Perhaps most important was the Duke's remarkable gardener, Joseph Paxton, who rose from garden boy to knight, and whose design of a series of ever-more astonishing glass-houses--one, the Big Stove, had a footprint the size of Grand Central Station--culminated in his design of the architectural wonder of the age, the Crystal Palace. Fittingly, Paxton based his design on a glass-house he had recently built to house Victoria regia. Indeed, the natural ribbing of the lily's leaf inspired the pattern of girders supporting the massive iron-and-glass building. From alligator-laden jungle ponds to the heights of Victorian society, The Flower of Empire unfolds the marvelous odyssey of this wonder of nature in a revealing work of cultural history.

An inspiring, practical and gorgeous guide to crafting the most realistic and artful paper flowers for arrangements, art, décor, wearables and more, from San Francisco botanical artist Tiffanie Turner. The Fine Art of Paper Flowers is an elevated art and craft guide that features complete step-by-step instructions for over 30 of Tiffanie Turner’s widely admired, unique, lifelike paper flowers and their foliage, from bougainvillea to English roses to zinnias. In the book, Turner also guides readers through making her signature giant paper peony, shares all of her secrets for special paper treatments, candy-striping, playing with color and creating botanical imperfections, and shows how to turn paper flowers into gorgeous garlands, headdresses, bouquets and more. These stunning creations can be made from simple and inexpensive materials and the book's detailed tutorials and beautiful photography make it easy to achieve dramatic and lifelike results.

It’s Christmastime, and the precocious Flavia de Luce-an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry and a penchant for crime-solving-is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Amid a raging blizzard, the entire village of Bishop’s Lacey gathers at Buckshaw to watch Wyvern perform, yet nobody is prepared for the evening’s shocking conclusion: a body found, past midnight, strangled to death with a length of film. But who among the assembled guests would stage such a chilling scene? As the storm worsens and the list of suspects grows, Flavia must use every ounce of sly wit at her disposal to ferret out a killer hidden in plain sight. From the Hardcover edition.

Seven experienced craft authors show how to make simple and stunning greetings cards in a rich variety of themes: fairy cards, art nouveau, clear stamped, Celtic, oriental, Victorian, rustic, paper pierced and paper lace cards. The techniques simply explained and demonstrated include pen and wash, 3D decoupage, using pressed flowers, glass painting, using embossing powder, metal embossing, using polymer clay, rubber stamping and using clear stamps, using craft stickers, using chalks or alcohol inks, sewing beads on to cards, origami, using craft punches and quilling. The resulting projects are stunning, but the clear step by step photographs, templates for the designs and simple instructions make them achievable for card makers of all skill levels and there are dozens of beautifully photographed variations for more inspiration. Card makers looking for all kinds of different techniques will find something to inspire them here.Uses material from:Handmade Fairy Cards 9781844483051Handmade Art Nouveau Cards 9781844482092Handmade Clear Stamped Cards 9781844482207Handmade Celtic Cards 9781844482603Handmade Oriental Cards 9781844482108Handmade Victorian Cards 9781844482467Hand Painted Rustic Cards 9781844482450Handmade Paper Pierced Cards 9781844482474Paper Lace Greetings Cards 9781844484072