Home Guide To Craft
Katherine Sorrell
In A Nutshell: A craft taster with projects of widely varying standard for thirty different crafts.
This is a fat craft reference book covering 30 different crafts. The majority are traditional – quilting, appliqué, soap making, paper mache – but there are a few surprises. How about shibon? Apparently this a Japanese word for resist dyed textiles, so more prosaically is just tie-dying. Each of the crafts starts with a shorted potted history of its origins, followed by two projects, designed by a specialist in that particular field. Photos accompany all the step by step instructions.
The projects vary widely in their desirability. I love an abstract silk painted scarf, but the felt table runner is dreadful. I decided to have a go at a beaded cuff. Basically this involves sewing beads onto calico backed ribbon. My local John Lewis didn’t sell the square shaped beads used in the book, so I picked out some bugle beads in a sophisticated steel grey/blue colour. It’s an easy project but requires patience to sew all the beads and I used far more than anticipated. I have to admit this is a work in progress, but so far, so good. I just wish I had used a slighter wider ribbon, as the beading tightens up the width.
With so much crammed in this book, I am not convinced there is enough information for some of the crafts to enable a beginner to successfully complete the project. Some require a daunting list of materials and would be prohibitively expensive for a beginner without knowing at the start if you will enjoy that particular craft.
I think this book would have benefited from a list of resources – perhaps a list of recommended books to take a craft further, and some good websites.
A nice addition to a craft library but not one of my favourites.
