This isn't poser-twee sugar-sweet immaculately-styled lifestyle craft filled with gorgeous lithe models. For a start, Eithne models all her projects herself. What's the point in writing about one's own personal style if every photo features a different model? The book has a handmade, borderline-hipsterish aesthetic which is tempered by Eithne's fantasies of running away to sea and wearing a dress made from living sweet peas.
I am going to get very snobby here for a paragraph and I dearly hope I don't offend you. This is merely a reflection on my own experience with the contemporary fad for craft publishing. Many sewing books piss me off by catering only to people with no sewing experience, teaching 'skills' like hemming serviettes and sewing a ribbon onto a teeshirt. When a writer exclusively offers projects that only require the most rudimentary grasp of a needle they don't push beginners to learn real skills, and offer absolutely nothing to the experienced sewer**. Happily, Eithne's book avoids this pitfall by miles.
Yes, many of the projects are simple and the pattern drafting techniques are the kind of thing I was doing as a teenager. But the resulting projects are something that a crafter of any skill level can aspire to. Embroidered dresses, clothing embellishments that can be undertaken with either a wonky handstitch or a high-precision sewing machine, and the cutest seasonal accessories which can be reinterpreted any way you can imagine. Very inspiring!
The one weakness of this book is the lack of diagrams to accompany the instructions. However it is in keeping with the DIY nature of the book to let readers figure things out for themselves, perhaps do things in unplanned ways and develop their own techniques to achieve their desired result.
I give this book a hearty needles-up, rate it four bobbins and look forward to using it as inspiration for many years to come.
Speaking of craft books - the Green Renters blog has a copy of The Big Book of Recycled Crafts to give away! Head over to the blog to find out more.
* The word is 'gave', not 'gifted'. I do my best to hold back when people use the word 'gift' as a verb but my own blog is a zero-tolerance 'gifted' zone. And yet I will use the word 'bestest'.
** Incidentally, I am so looking forward to a particular sewing book which expects experience in its readers and has the highest-quality instructions one could wish for.
5 comments:
Yay! I'm so happy to see someone else miffed by "gifted"! I understand the desire to create verbs from nouns when there isn't a simple verb for it (my mother doesn't like "to chair" or "to lunch," but "to be the chair" or "to have lunch with someone" is admittedly longer), but "to give" is perfectly good!
Hmmm, yes gifted always sounds a bit dodgy to me! Having more than a passing interest in verbs, I recently carried out a little research ... and discovered this usage is mentioned by the Oxford English Dictionary! Apparently its quite an old word, that is enjoying a resurgence. Arrrggh.
But I digress ... I wanted to say I liked your book review very much and will be keeping an eye out for a copy ( ... that is, unless someone gifts me one first!)
I'm heading straight over to Booko to find out how much that book is!
I'm off to find me that there book!!
Oh - and thanks for the lovely mention of the upcoming book.... May I add that - along with intermediate and advanced projects - there WILL be a few beginners projects in the book....but no hemming of squares, because even beginners are capable of more than that.
:)
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