A thoughtful, meditative guide to the ways creative textile art can soothe and comfort us during challenging times. Renowned British textile artists Cas Holmes and Deena Beverley, each well known for their richly textured, deeply evocative work in stitch, collaborate for the first time in this important and timely book. Beautifully illustrated with a wealth of work from both artists along with other embroiderers and textile artists from around the world, Soulful Stitch documents a wide range of stitched responses to crisis, both personal and global. With invaluable advice on how to develop your own work in times of trouble, it explores: • How the restrictions and trials of everyday life can inform your textile work, enabling you to develop imaginative new approaches. • The healing power of stitch to soothe and console, with the simple act of putting needle into fabric providing a mindful route to inner calm. • Practical ways to continue with your textile art practice in the face of seismic life changes, finding creative opportunity in difficult situations. • How to use found objects, repurposed threads and personal items to create deep emotional resonance in your own work. Both authors have recent lived experience of having to navigate new paths through big life challenges, making this book particularly heartfelt. It truly demonstrates how even in the toughest times, creativity in textile art can keep you afloat.

Tired of knitting books that spend fifty pages telling you how to get started? Get the skinny, compact directions for simple to advanced designs (such as a baby carrier, bangleless bracelet, and mobius wrap). Over twenty unique, quick-to-knit items, photographed at the Historic Michie Tavern (near Jeffersons Monticello), are for knitters and spinners of all skill levels. Your soul will find comfort in creating a gift to comfort another soul.

Textiles and clothing are interwoven with Islamic culture. In Islamicate Textiles, readers are taken on a journey from Central Asia to Tanzania to uncover the central roles that textiles play within Muslim-majority communities. This thematically arranged book sheds light on the traditions, rituals and religious practices of these regions, and the ways in which each one incorporates materials and clothing. Drawing on examples including Iranian lion carpets and Arabic keffiyeh, Faegheh Shirazi frames these textiles and totemic items as important cultural signifiers that, together, form a dynamic and fascinating material culture. Like a developing language, this culture expands, bends and develops to suit the needs of new generations and groups across the world. The political significance of Islamicate textiles is also explored: Faegheh Shirazi's writing reveals the fraught relationship between the East – with its sought-after materials and much-valued textiles – and the European countries that purchased and repurposed these goods, and lays bare the historical and contemporary connections between textiles, colonialism, immigration and economics. Dr Shirazi also discusses gender and how textiles and clothing are intimately linked with sexuality and gender identity.

Learn how to knit a sweater seamlessly. Kristen TenDyke will teach you how to knit the perfect sweater--no assembly required. Through clever planning and some simple techniques, her knitting projects are shaped and joined as you go--all without sacrificing the pretty details. No-Sew Knits offers 20 garments that combine innovative construction and on-trend styling for comfortable everyday wear. Kristen takes the opportunity to introduce you to a variety of easier-than-they-seem techniques, while keeping each knitting pattern approachable for advanced beginners. Chapters offer basic no-sew patterns, interchangeable stitch patterns, cables, and lace. The results are beautifully constructed garments that boast eye-catching details such as seamless pockets, hoods, bust darts, and faux seams. Each knitting pattern features a Tip section that helps you learn new ways to customize your garments. Pretty and practical, the patterns in No-Sew Knits will build your knitting repertoire as you build your wardrobe.

Paint, Stitch, Play! In The Art of Whimsical Stitching, bestselling author and teacher Joanne Sharpe shares her favorite, go-to methods for creating exuberant stitch art. If you're a sewer or quilter, you'll take your stitching in a new direction with paints, markers, and dyes. If you're a mixed-media artist, you'll learn to embellish your work with stitching. Follow step-by-step instructions and photos demonstrating a dozen inspiring techniques, including collage, stenciling, free-motion stitching, fused applique lettering, needle felting, doodle machine and hand embroidery, and more! Then, transform your custom fabric into playful pillows and bags, art quilts, journals, and other fun and funk-tional projects. Joanne's whimsical artwork and a "sketchbook" of designs you can adapt for your own work round out this colorful, inspirational guide.

Inspiration and practical tips on incorporating the everyday into textile art. In Embroidering the Everyday, acclaimed textile artist Cas Holmes explores the 'everyday' and the 'domestic', generating a wealth of inspiration and raw material to create textile work that resonates with time and place. Cas invites us to re-examine the world and use the limitations sometimes imposed by geographic area or individual circumstances as a rich resource to develop ideas for mixed media textiles in a more thoughtful way. With techniques and projects throughout, the book explores: How to be more resourceful with what we have to hand, including working with vintage scraps, homemade dyes and papers, and even teabags and biscuits. Rediscovering family history and how photographs and objects can provide inspiration, including Cas's own exploration of her Romani heritage. Drawing inspiration from our local landscape and how it changes through the seasons. How to transform materials with mark-making, printing, image transfer, collage and stitch. Packed with inspirational work from the author, and other leading practitioners who place the everyday at the heart of their work, this treasure trove of ideas, techniques and practical projects is an essential guide for our times.

Although she's taken an interest in Irish embroidery, Marcy Singer can't help but abandon her needlecraft when handsome local brewer Todd finds himself accused of murder. Both Todd and his friend Blake's fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and neither is talking about what happened. Marcy is determined to stitch together some luck from more than a few four-leaf clovers and prove that the culprit was someone else...