Stunning Stitches for Crazy Quilts

About Kathy Seaman Shaw

Kathy Seaman Shaw teaches sewing, ribbon embroidery and quilting at regional guilds and the community college in her area. Her blog series of free, online crazy-quilt courses began in 2011 and continues to draw visitors from around the world. For more information visit www.shawkl.com.

Sew Christmas

You've never seen seams like those before! In Kathy's read, you'll find 480 unique quilt seams for you to embroider and embellish to your heart's content, whether that's with vibrant sequins, antique beads or silk ribbons. 

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Postcard Reviews

I just love embroidery and this book has over 400 stitch designs.

Even a complete beginner would be able to sew the amazing stitches and along with the instructions, hints and tips, this is a book that definitely earns it's shelf space.

The book is set in three sections: templates, stitch instructions and design illustrations. The abundance of colour is both amazing and inspiring.

Advice on which needle to choose, and there are many.. embellishments to finish your design and much much more helps grow your embroidery know-how and enhance your skills.

I especially loved the Stitch Template idea and I will be definitely make one. I have not come across this idea before and think it's a genius idea.

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Needle 'n Thread

'Stunning Stitches for Crazy Quilts is one of those visually exciting books, but it is much, much more. Its a practical guide to traditional crazy quilting, presented in a very organized, accessible way for beginners and beyond.

The book is organized and direct. Its easy to grasp the guiding concept behind Kathys method of building embellished seams for crazy quilting. It provides practically an infinite resource for seam embellishing, by combining and mixing and matching the different layouts, elements, and stitches offered in the book.

If youre a crazy quilter whos always looking for seam ideas, or if youre an aspiring crazy quilter who isnt sure where to start with building decorative seams, the book will provide you with all kinds of ideas and inspiration, based on some very simple concepts.

If you love stitch combinations, color, texture, and just fun explorations with your needle and thread, then the book is for you, too!'

Read Mary Corbet's full review here.

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MyShelf.com

Embellish the seams on your crazy quilt (or any other sewing project) with the ideas in this beautiful book.  There are 480 seam designs to choose from and 36 stitch-template designs for getting the placement exactly right.  If you are new to freestyle hand embroidery it doesnt matter as not only are there clear diagrams for all the stitches used, there are only a few of the simpler ones to learn.

 

Part of the appeal of this book is not merely that it contains page after page of stunning seam designs, but that none is too difficult to create even for novice embroiderers.  Any book with quilt on the front page is going to be aimed primarily at quilters, a craft that mostly makes use of a sewing machine and/or ordinary hand sewing stitches.  Crazy quilting is rather different, and a brief history of it is given along with a list of what you will need.  The stitches are the usual basic hand embroidery staples such as blanket stitch, herringbone, bullion knots, feather stitch etc plus several variations to make a seam look prettier.  The large coloured diagrams are easy to follow and include how to do several stitches using ribbon and how to make several small repeat designs.  These include flowers, insects and prongs as well as how to add beads and buttons.  At the front is also a short section on how to use the book including building layered seams and using templates.  There are 36 of these ready to scan/photocopy/trace onto vellum and use to get your seams perfectly spaced.  The rest of the book contains first a gallery of photographs of the seams, and then the patterns.  These are organized by the base seam stitch and are drawn in several colours for ease of use.  Under the diagram is a list of the stitches and any other information.  For example, the template number is given first, followed by the stitches used first in thread, then in ribbon (if applicable) and lastly if there are any beads and baubles to add.  The finished result looks gorgeous, and the cover shows several of them to whet your appetite.  A lovely and very user-friendly book that will appeal to quilters, hand embroiderers and anybody else who wants to embellish something.

 

If you cannot find a good range of embroidery and quilting materials locally try http://www.searchpress.com for a list of suppliers.