Scandinavian Needlecraft: 35 step-by-step projects to create the Scandinavian home


Clare Youngs - 2010
    Incorporating the finest elements of Scandinavian crafting traditions, inspiration is taken from a range of backgrounds including classic folk art, as well as more contemporary sources. These delightful designs, each with clear step-by-step instructions and beautiful photography, will have you itching to get stitching. Arranged into five chapters, the projects work with a wide variety of fabrics: there are adorable fleece and felt baby bootees finished with French knots, classic embroidered gingham napkins, and a striped machine-embroidered apron. A wide range of techniques are employed, including appliqué, cut work, patchwork, decorative machine stitching, shadow work, and ribbon work. Basic stitches such as herringbone, cross stitch, Danish knots, blanket stitch, and satin stitch are also used to great effect. Simplicity is always at the heart of Clare’s designs, and with step-by-step artworks and such clear instructions, anyone can have a go and will be surprised how quickly beautiful pieces can be made.

Sewing in No Time: 50 Step-By-Step Weekend Projects Made Easy


Emma Hardy - 2008
    You are sure to find plenty of ideas to inspire you in every room of your home. Designer style can be achieved at a fraction of the cost. Store-bought soft furnishings can be expensive and the choice is often limited-but with so many gorgeous designer fabrics on sale, there's never been a better time to make your own. Sewing in No Time sets out 50 simple step-by-step projects using nothing more than the most basic of sewing skills. From a simple curtain with a pattern border and a striped duvet to a fabric storage box and a children's play tent, Sewing in No Time is the perfect book for people who are big on ideas but short of time. Whether your home is a traditional country cottage or a modern warehouse-style apartment, you're sure to find plenty of ideas to inspire you. Softcover: 160 pages. Made in USA.

EcoBeauty: Scrubs, Rubs, Masks, Rinses, and Bath Bombs for You and Your Friends


Lauren Cox - 2009
    Crafty types will love the gift ideas, and even those of us who can barely make toast will be able to handle these recipes. Making beauty products at home is a great way to save money and help the environment, and these recipes will do all that plus give you gorgeous skin and hair. --Beth Mayall-Traglia, editor in chief of TotalBeauty.comFun, fresh bath and body recipes that are great for gifts, girls' nights, or everyday use!--Jill and Megan Carle, coauthors of Teens Cook and College CookingAttention DIYers! Finally, the ultimate natural-beauty "cookbook" packed with deliciously easy, eco-friendly recipes for getting gorgeous with fresh ingredients from the kitchen. A must-have for anyone who wants to be healthy, save money, and make the world a more eco-beautiful place.--Rona Berg, editor in chief of Organic Beauty magazine and author of Fast BeautyLotions and Toners and Soaps, Oh My!What's the hippest way to be green? When you whip up a batch of Avocado Hair Conditioner, not only will your hair be green (for about twenty minutes) but your lifestyle will, too. Natural beauty maven Lauren Cox is bringing bath and body into the eco-friendly future with 100 easy and economical projects, featuring au courant ingredients--hemp oil, green tea, soy milk, powdered kelp, goat's milk, and more--that are increasingly easy to find. Recycled bottling and green gift-giving ideas round out this stylish how-to manual for the DIY generation. So whether you are a crafty chica revitalizing your skin with an Espresso Yourself Facial Mask, a penny-pinching diva rocking some simple Green Tea Toner, or a chocoholic with a craving for Chocolate Brownie Lip Gloss, EcoBeauty has a money-saving, planet-loving, skin-pleasing creation for you.

Mary's Household Tips and Tricks: Your Guide to Happiness in the Home


Mary Berry - 2017
    'It's practical AND beautiful . . . an ideal gift ' Graham Norton, BBC Radio 2Britain's best-loved cook and national treasure Mary Berry lets readers in on her very own household secrets . . . A comprehensive, beautifully illustrated guide that shares her greatest tips on how to care for your home. 'This book is a collection of skills I've learned for running a home. Gleaned from years of practical experience, along with all the hints that friends and family have imparted to me, I hope it will be a helping hand' - Mary BerryInside you'll find . . .A KITCHEN KNOW-HOW for the heart of your home - Freezer tips - Organize your food - CLEANING & CONFIGURING YOUR HOME - Create cleaning products from store cupboard items - LAUNDRY & WARDROBE WISDOM - Banish moths from your home for good - Remove stains from every kind of fabric - get green fingered with GARDENING & FLOWERS - Bring greenery into your home even without a garden - Create beautiful flower arrangements - And finally master the art of HOSTING & ADDING THE EXTRA TOUCHES for sparkling parties at home.Easy to use, practical and gorgeously illustrated, Mary's Household Tips & Tricks covers everything from Mary's golden rules for baking to her favourite flowers for each season, from how to polish silver to whether tea should be poured before or after milk. With secrets for accomplishing the most challenging home-keeping tasks with ease, Mary's wonderfully simple book will help turn any house into a home. 'The Queen of British baking has whipped up a recipe for home happiness' The Independent 'A domestic goddess' The Daily Telegraph

The Home Edit Life: The Complete Guide to Organizing Absolutely Everything at Work, at Home, and on the Go


Clea Shearer - 2020
    The Home Edit mentality is all about embracing your life--whether you're a busy mom, a roommate living with three, or someone who's always traveling for work. You just need to know how to set up a system that works for you.In the next phase of the home organizing craze, Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin go beyond the pantry and bookshelf to show you how to contain the chaos in all aspects of your life from office space to traveling bags to pet supplies and holiday storage. Take quizzes and get to know your organizing style, tailor it to your family's lifestyle, and lead the low-guilt life as you apply more genius ideas to every aspect of your life.Clea and Joanna are here to remind you that "it's okay to own things" (we all do!) in the quest for pretty and smart spaces. With The Home Edit Life, you'll be corralling phone cords, archiving old photos, packing your suitcase like a pro, and arranging your phone apps by color in no time.

Yankee Magazine's Vinegar, Duct Tape, Milk Jugs & More: 1,001 Ingenious Ways to Use Common Household Items to Repair, Restore, Revive, or Replace Just About Everything in Your Life


Earl Proulx - 1999
    The trick is figuring out what among these objects is treasure and what's trash. That's where Earl Proulx and the editors of Yankee magazine can help.Drawing on their own creative ideas--and those of ingenious Yankees all over New England--they've come up with more than 1,000 clever ways to put common household objects to uncommon and valuable uses. The result is a book that will benefit you in five clear ways.1. This book will empower you.Other people might be stymied when, say, Spot knocks a glass of grape juice on that elegant white rug. Not you. You'll be able to lift that stain yourself--without buying some expensive remover--just by applying a dab of shaving cream. Vinegar, Duct Tape, Milk Jugs, and More contains dozens of clever do-it-yourself ideas like this.2. This book will save you money.Need an attractive gift for a friend, a game to entertain the grandkids, a desk organizer for your home office? Forget the catalogs and stay away from the stores. As you'll see, you can make these items and dozens more in minutes from the leftover things around your house.3. This book will make your life easier.There's no need to stock a cabinetful of specialty cleansers. Vinegar, Duct Tape, Milk Jugs, and More will show you how to use common ingredients like salt, ketchup, baking soda, flour, yogurt, and, of course, vinegar to handle many of the cleaning tasks you encounter every day.4. This book will reduce the waste in your home.If you've ever regretted the amount of trash you throw out each week, here's the solution. This book will show you how to give a second life to everything from plastic containers to bubble wrap to panty house and more.5. This book will entertain you.Whether you settle on one of Earl's yarns, the story behind common objects like Post-It Notes and condensed milk, or the "My Way" tips from actual readers, you're bound to enjoy the fun side of this book.Vinegar, Duct Tape, Milk Jugs, and More provides no-fail ideas for every area of your home, and for many actitivites, from gardening to cooking, from travel to sports, and from crafts to games. Consider it your no-cost tool kit for all your needs around the home.Throw out a candle stub, some sour milk, that leftover bag of cat litter? Not on your life!You might think of these things as waste that's headed for the trash can, but there are hundreds of practical ways you can save money, time, and natural resources by reusing these and other common objects around your house. Follow Earl Proulx and the editors of Yankee magazine as they show you how to:Make a soothing facial mask from cat litterCover up furniture scratches with a dab of iodineTun an old teacup, a sandwich bag, and some sugar into an elegant pin cushionClean car grease off your hands with olive oilUnstick a window with the stub of an old candlestickClear a clogged showerhead with vinegarAnt-proof your home with lemon juiceMake an attractive country picture frame from an old six-pane windowEnd static cling with hair sprayStop foot blisters with duct tapeKeep bait worms fresh with coffee groundsMake an earring holder out of window screeningMore than 1,000 creative, fun, and ingenious tips

Mending Life: A Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts


Nina Montenegro - 2020
    It is also an exploration of how mending can be a gently healing practice in our daily lives and a small act of rebellion in a world where many things are discarded without thought.Mending Life encourages us to cherish our things by repairing them rather than discarding them. It also encourages us to change our consumption habits so that with small mends here and there, we extend the life of our garments and other household items. This handbook is for beginners but also offers more advanced techniques to those with some experience in mending. You'll learn basic techniques such as patching, but will have options to take it a step further with decorative sashiko stitching; you'll also learn how to darn socks and mend sweaters, as well as things like a tear in a bedsheet or down jacket. And along the way, the authors share heartfelt stories about the powerful act of mending, which strengthens not only the object we are repairing, but ourselves as well. Vibrant, full-color illustrations are woven throughout the handbook. Mending Life is a timeless, practical guide to cherishing and caring for our belongings.

Attainable Sustainable: The Lost Art of Self-Reliant Living


Kris Bordessa - 2020
    In these beautifully illustrated pages, Kris Bordessa offers DIY lovers an indispensable home reference for sustainability in the 21st century, using tried-and-true advice, 50 enticing recipes, and step-by-step directions for creating fun, cost-efficient projects that will bring out your inner pioneer. Filled with 340 color photographs, this relatable, comprehensive book contains time honored-wisdom and modern know-how for getting back to basics in a beautiful, accessible package.

The Hands-On Home: A Seasonal Guide to Cooking, Preserving & Natural Homekeeping


Erica Strauss - 2015
    A fresh take on modern homemaking, this is a practical (and sometimes sassy) guide to maximizing your time, effort, and energy in the kitchen and beyond. With a focus on less consumerism, it will teach you how to organize your kitchen and home to make the best use of your time. For those yearning to live a more ecologically minded, grounded lifestyle, this book is full of practical, no-nonsense advice, fabulous recipes, and time- and money-saving techniques.

Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning


Deborah Madison - 1999
    Yet here is a book that goes back to the future--celebrating traditional but little-known French techniques for storing and preserving edibles in ways that maximize flavor and nutrition.Translated into English, and with a new foreword by Deborah Madison, this book deliberately ignores freezing and high-temperature canning in favor of methods that are superior because they are less costly and more energy-efficient.As Eliot Coleman says in his foreword to the first edition, "Food preservation techniques can be divided into two categories: the modern scientific methods that remove the life from food, and the natural 'poetic' methods that maintain or enhance the life in food. The poetic techniques produce... foods that have been celebrated for centuries and are considered gourmet delights today.""Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning" offers more than 250 easy and enjoyable recipes featuring locally grown and minimally refined ingredients. It is an essential guide for those who seek healthy food for a healthy world.

Sublime Stitching: Hundreds of Hip Embroidery Patterns and How-To


Jenny Hart - 2006
    Now, in her much-anticipated first book, embroidery pioneer Jenny Hart brings her sublime designs to everyone. Expanding on the offerings of her Stitch-It Kit, Sublime Stitching offers all the instructions, tips, and hip patterns needed to create hundreds of stylish projects. Perfect for stitchers of all experience levels, this charmingly photographed book includes simple directions and inspiring project ideas for stitching up jeans, handbags, neckties, baby bibs, and more. Best of all are the entirely original, ready-to-use iron-on patterns bound in the back. Jenny has included all sorts of delightful designsfrom cheeky margaritas and maracas to classic teapots and cupcakes. These patterns are easy to remove after using, and a cinch to store in the handy pockets on the inside covers. Believe it or not, each pattern can be used up to nine times. Now that's sublime.

Country Living The Farm Chicks Christmas: Merry Ideas for the Holidays


Serena Thompson - 2010
    Here, she shows us how to spread the magic of the season, with ideas for entertaining, decorating, tree trimming, charming crafts, and 17 recipes for yummy holiday sweets-plus tips for wrapping food and gifts.As in The Farm Chicks in the Kitchen, Serena weaves delightful stories of her family and friends throughout the book, calling forth nostalgic smiles that remind us of the importance of tradition at this special time of year.

The Complete Modern Blacksmith


Alexander G. Weygers - 1997
    An essential volume in any serious craftperson's library, this book covers setting up a smithy (anvil, forge, hammer, tongs, and all), and manufacturing everything from stone-carving chisels to decorative wall hooks.

Complete Guide to Needlework


Virginia Colton - 1979
    Over 500 pages filled with photos, diagrams, and other illustrations.

Sew Pretty Christmas Homestyle: Over 35 Irresistible Projects to Fall in Love with


Tone Finnanger - 2007
    A Christmas-inspired color palette and lovable designs combine to create a festive and fun collection of over 35 projects with ideas for the entire home from the kitchen to children's bedrooms - readers will be able to spread Christmas joy throughout their house. Easy-to-follow instructions, stunning photography and delightful illustrations accompany each project, making it an ideal title for beginning sewers to more advanced stitchers looking for a festive spin.