Get invaluable advice from sewers like you with this handy reference. This practical reference guide features the best hands-on sewing tips culled from the popular sewing website PatternReview.com, a community of more than 200,000 members. You’ll also find special how-to features by PatternReview.com’s master teachers and pattern designers, including Kenneth D. King, Susan Khalje, Sarah Veblen, Shannon Gifford, and Anna Mazur. Best of all, these words of wisdom—more than 1,000 tips in all—will provide you with new solutions to the trickiest problems and show you how to save time, money, and materials. Praise for 1,000 Clever Sewing Shortcuts & Tips “A must-have book for every sewer’s library. Whether you’re a burgeoning beginner or a seasoned seamstress, this book will teach you more than a few new tricks. Honestly, I couldn’t put it down! It’s packed full of creative tips and great ideas, shared as always, sewer to sewer!” —Margo Martin, Executive Director, American Sewing Guild, Inc. “The only thing better than a good tip is more good tips, no? It’s all very well to get an expert’s tips, but what’s really needed when tip gathering is a hive-mind’s best discoveries, and there’s no busier, buzzier sewing hive than Deepika’s PatternReview, so you KNOW they’re in here, those tips you haven’t head, haven’t yet tried, haven’t yet imagined. Welcome to the Hive!” —David Coffin, former editor of Threads magazine and author of Making Trousers for Men and Women

Finishing your own quilts is easier than you think Turn the corner to free-motion success with a meandering makeover! Best-selling author Angela Walters shows you that free-motion quilting doesn't have to be scary - with a couple designs in your pocket, you can finish almost any quilt on your home machine and enjoy the process. Practice 8 meandering stitches for beginners, plus creative variations on each, with step-by-step visuals and quilted samples. Start your free-motion journey on the right foot with proven techniques to help you disguise mistakes and transition between designs with ease. • Thrive at free-motion quilting with popular teacher and best-selling author Angela Walters • Just starting out? Angela includes the basics of quilting and supplies • Troubleshoot mistakes, master the meander, and practice fluid movement between quilt stitches

Resurrecting the art of applique--a technique in which pieces of fabric are sewn onto clothing, bags, quilts, and other creations--this enlightening resource provides today's generation of "sewists" with a technique that can be combined with embroidery, beadwork, buttons, ribbons, and more to imbue works with a creative and personal style. Ideal for those with some sewing experience looking to break away from the restrictions of traditional patterns, this guide offers the details for both hand and machine applique techniques, as well as a history of applique and how it was rediscovered in the fiber arts. Featured are 20 modern, stylish sewing projects ranging from aprons, skirts, pillows, and totes to a duvet cover, wall clock, blouse, baby quilt, and scarf. With step-by-step instructions, color photographs, and comprehensive how-to embroidery instructions, this is an all-in-one resource and guide.

“Lively and evocative, Mother Land is a deftly crafted exploration of identity and culture, with memorable and deeply human characters who highlight how that which makes us different can ultimately unite us.”—Amy Myerson, author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays and The Imperfects From the critically acclaimed author of America for Beginners, a wonderfully insightful, witty, and heart-piercing novel, set in Mumbai, about an impulsive American woman, her headstrong Indian mother-in-law, and the unexpected twists and turns of life that bond them. When Rachel Meyer, a thirtysomething foodie from New York, agrees to move to Mumbai with her Indian-born husband, Dhruv, she knows some culture shock is inevitable. Blessed with a curious mind and an independent spirit, Rachel is determined to learn her way around the hot, noisy, seemingly infinite metropolis she now calls home. But the ex-pat American’s sense of adventure is sorely tested when her mother-in-law, Swati, suddenly arrives from Kolkata—a thousand miles away—alone, with an even more shocking announcement: she’s left her husband of more than forty years and moving in with them. Nothing the newlyweds say can budge the steadfast Swati, and as the days pass, it becomes clear she is here to stay—an uneasy situation that becomes more difficult when Dhruv is called away on business. Suddenly these two strong-willed women from such very different backgrounds, who see life so differently, are alone together in a home that each is determined to run in her own way—a situation that ultimately brings into question the very things in their lives that had seemed perfect and permanent . . . with results neither of them expect. Heartfelt, charming, deeply insightful and wise, Mother Land introduces us to two very different women from very different cultures . . . who maybe aren’t so different after all.

One look at these pages and you know that this isn't your grandmother's crewel, but a hip, contemporary update that will have everyone reaching for a needle and thread. And these projects are easy, too, because crewel has no counting, no grids, and no cross-stitch--just beautiful free-form embroidery. Dive right in, guided by a basics chapter that explains how to do the different stitches, ranging from French knots to laid filling. Novices will swiftly move on to the 30 practice designs, all accompanied by easy-to-follow instructions and diagrams, and a dozen lovely projects. Make a card or keepsake scrapbook embellished with stitched motifs, colorful totes, table runners, and an elegant tryptich.

This volume delves into the study of the world’s emerging middle class. With essays on Europe, the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the book studies recent trends and developments in middle class evolution at the global, regional, national, and local levels. It reconsiders the conceptualization of the middle class, with a focus on the diversity of middle class formation in different regions and zones of world society. It also explores middle class lifestyles and everyday experiences, including experiences of social mobility, feelings of insecurity and anxiety, and even middle class engagement with social activism. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book provides a sophisticated analysis of this new and rapidly expanding socioeconomic group and puts forth some provocative ideas for intellectual and policy debates. It will be of importance to students and researchers of sociology, economics, development studies, political studies, Latin American studies, and Asian Studies.