Over 500 pages filled with photos, diagrams, and other illustrations.

    This inspiring book shows you how to record your experiences, using sketchbooks, journals and photography, to create personal narratives that can form a starting point for more finished stitched-textile pieces. Acclaimed textile artist and teacher Cas Holmes, whose work is often inspired by her life and the journeys she makes, helps you find inspiration through your own life and explains how to record what you see in sketchbooks and journals, which can often become beautiful objects in themselves. She explains how you can use photography, both as documentation and as inspiration, and sometimes incorporate it into the work itself, along with found objects and ephemera. Throughout the book are useful techniques that can be harnessed to add extra interest to your work, such as methods for making layered collages, how to 'sketch' with stitch, and advice on design and colour. If you want to create beautiful, unique work inspired by your life and travels, this is the perfect book for you.

    With step-by-step instructions, this essential manual details the basic steps of spinning and then advances to the more complicated spinning wheel, showing how to use the spindle to make specific types of yarn, explaining traditional spindle spinning techniques, and detailing five simple projects designed to instill confidence in creating a variety of yarns with this simple tool. Combining fascinating historical narratives, traditions, and cultures from around the globe with vivid photography, this all-encompassing tour of the spindle also boasts easy-to-follow, contemporary techniques and styles that affirm the tool's enduring legacy.

    This guide shows readers how to do everything from basic bead stringing to wire wrapping, all in the series' easy-to-follow, full-color format. The book includes 20 detailed patterns for making earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and more.

    With stitch motifs that are contemporary and modern, with a graphic aesthetic-not retro, kitschy, sentimental, or old-fashioned, the book is accessible to the total beginner plus contains ideas to keep more advanced stitchers interested.

    Need some pillows for your new couch, and have a bunch of old wool sweaters? Turn those sweaters into felt! Knitting, felting, leather tooling, glass and metal work––it's all here. CRAFTIVITY is filled with 60 amazing DIY projects that make the most of what you have by taking old stuff and turning it into functional, breathtaking art.

    For aspiring artists who want to draw and paint but just can't seem to find time in the day, Gregory offers 5– to 10–minute exercises for every skill level that fit into any schedule—whether on a plane, in a meeting, or at the breakfast table—along with practical instruction on techniques and materials, plus strategies for making work that's exciting, unintimidating, and fulfilling. Filled with Gregory's encouraging words and motivating illustrations, Art Before Breakfast teaches readers how to develop a creative habit and lead a richer life through making art.

    Find your "authentic" design voice and get carving today!

    Arranged by how long it takes to complete each project, this book focuses on gifts that generally require less than three hours of time. It details the knowledge and skills you need to improvise on these projects.

    Original.

    Now, in The Modern Natural Dyer, expert Kristine Vejar shares the most user-friendly techniques for dyeing yarn, fabric, and finished goods at home with foraged and garden-raised dyestuffs as well as with convenient natural dye extracts. Demystifying the "magic," Vejar explains in explicit, easy-to-follow detail how to produce consistent, long-lasting color. With stunning photography of the dyes themselves, the dyeing process, and 20 projects for home and wardrobe (some to knit, some to sew, and some just a matter of submerging a finished piece in a prepared bath), The Modern Natural Dyer is a complete resource for aspiring and experienced dye artisans.

    Imagine a supportive community of artists sharing the innermost pages of their sketchbooks and offering you tips and techniques for overcoming creative blocks. That's what The Sketchbook Challenge is all about, and the popular blog of the same name has already inspired thousands. Inside this book, you'll find:   · Themes that will motivate you to start your sketchbook—and, more important, keep at it · Tutorials spotlighting such mixed-media techniques as thread sketching, painted papers for collage, digital printing, and much more · Strategies to get off the sketchbook page and start creating inspired art—whether you're into painting, collage, fiber art, or beyond. · In-depth profiles of artists who have taken the Sketchbook Challenge and used it as a launching pad for their own meaningful artwork

    In this how-to book accomplished bag maker, Nicole Mallalieu, reveals her high-end techniques, shortcuts, and secrets for professional design and finishes. The 10 featured projects teach a range of expert skills from adjusting the proportion of the pattern to constructing pockets, straps, flaps, and bases.. By the end of this book, you ll have a closetful of polished bags and most likely sew better than you ever imagined you could."

    This inspirational guide with DIY attitude has everything you need to know about the world’s great T-shirt: how to cut it, sew it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, and best of all, transform it. • Features more than 100 projects (plus 200 variations) for customized tees, tank tops, tube tops, T-skirts—even handbags, a patchwork blanket, iPod cozies, leg warmers, and more. • Not a DIY expert? Not to worry. More than one third of the projects are no sew, meaning anyone who can wield a pair of scissors can put a personal stamp on her wardrobe. But the sewing basics are here too: backstitch and whipstitch, gather and ruche, appliqué and drawstrings. • And the mission statement for Generation T: Ask not what your T-shirt can do for you; ask what you can do for your T-shirt. And then Do-It-Yourself!

    The rich, historic traditions of plant and animal fibers are fascinatingly juxtaposed with recent advances in synthesized fiber and mankind’s use of fibers in the past, present, and future, while detailed, image-laden instructions for four intermediate projects demonstrate the range of possibilities, from sturdy, plied yarns to playful, novelty yarns. Spinners are also offered guidance on planning a project from start to finish, as well as how to care for and store completed projects.