Arts and Crafts Books

This is a must-have book for any sewer, quilter, or embroiderer. Every single page is packed with innovative ideas and techniques, each accompanied by a multitude of photos that thoroughly illustrate the processes. I've been a quilter for 15 years, and just started machine embroidering; there were quilting techniques I'd never seen before, and I'm a quilting instructor! They thought of everything and every technique in this book. After just a brief thumb-through of the book my head was spinning with ideas and inspiration! I have well over 400 books in my needlecrafts library, and I can tell already that this is going to be one of my most-referred-to volumes. It's worth 100 times what they're charging for it! I guarantee you'll love it!

I have been sewing for thirty-five years and have a library of books on embroidery, applique, sewing with fleece, etc. This is one of the best I have found. It covers everything from Applique to Zigzag with full color illustrations and excellent advice. I read it cover to cover and then bought a second copy to give to my sister (I wasn't about to part with mine!)

This book is perfect for anyone who has bought an embroidery machine for the first time. The steps and descriptions in this book are clear an concise and extremely user friendly. This book is useful for any type of machine.

The collaborative work of Paul Duchscherer (a design historian and interior designer specializing in history preservation work) and Linda Svendsen (a graduate of New York' Parsons School of Design and an expert photographer), Along Bungalow Lines: Creating An Arts & Crafts Home is a guide especially for homeowners interested in renovating and upgrading their vintage homes without sacrificing their unique Arts & Crafts styles. Chapters discuss American Historicism, Prairie Evolution and progressive period-style influence, the inspiration of "Greene Style", and much more, all embracing a closeness to nature and a high regard for elegance and creativity. Full-color photographs on every page allow for a breathtaking tour of beautiful homes, and the brief text debates conundrums affecting projects ranging from enlarging a period home to constructing a new building designed to echo a historic one. A visually stunning collection, filled with equal measures of practical and aesthetic advice.

Whether building a craftsman home or remodeling your bungalow, this book is full of ideas for you. Colorful pictures too!

This is a great book if your looking for idea's for inside and outside of your craftman home. Or if your looking to build one. I loved how it told all about how craftman homes came about and the pictures are wonderful.

There are two pages for each letter. Children can trace both capitol and lower-case letters, then practice making the shapes themselves. They identify the letters when jumbled with similar letters and complete alliterated sentences. It's fantastic for helping with letter formation, recognition and phonetic sounds.

My daughter is three. These worksheets have been a wonderful help to her and fun, too! She loves playing "school". The best part is the free copying!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

This is a very helpful workbook. In the beginning of the year, we do them in class. Once the kids get the hang of it, I send it home as H.W. for extra practice...good morning work, also. Many letter writing workbooks available on the market (and pages that come with reading and phonics series) have too many to trace or not enough. This one fits!! Good job, Scholastic!

my mom surprised me with this when she bought the alpha tales boxed set. i was blasting through the roof when i saw the workbook. it is fun because you get a lot of tracing practice for each letter and the stories match the alpha tales books. and you have fun activites too for each letter. my mom made copies so she could use them for my little brother too. the book said she could do that and now if i mess up she can just copy me another page to do. this book has more times of the letter on it to trace than my other writing book so it is more fun. you should get this book. i am now finished with what i want to say about this one. really - stop typing.

Could quilters of the world finish quilts within six weeks? That was Karey Patterson Bresenhan's challenge to Internet members of QuiltArt. As long as it wasn't upsetting, every single quilt sent in would be on display in Houston. There, almost 300 quilts ended up being part of the international exhibits of memorial quilts.

Bresenhan didn't stop there. She went on to write a beautiful book. This way those who couldn't get to Texas would still have a chance to see the quilts.

Quilts with angels would seem to be such natural crowd-pleasers. For me, they certainly were here: Flights of angels; Liberty weeps for her country; Mountain of sorrow; Pray for New York; September 11, 2001; and Transformation scene. Three others also had such an impact on me: Mourn with those who mourn, Too many, and Wish you were here.

AMERICA FROM THE HEART is user-friendly in the way it's organized. The book also is thoughtfully written and wonderfully illustrated. It's one of my favorite quilting books, along with JACOBEAN RHAPSODIES by Patricia B Campbell and Mimi Ayars.

What could be more American than a quilt? Women and men have made quilts for several hundred years to keep their families warm and to fulfill their desire to create. This book offers a look at the work of quiltmakers who have expressed their feelings by creating original design quilts in the painful weeks after the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The multitude of feelings and thoughts span the range of human emotion in the face of an event that changed our lives forever. There is something immensely comforting in seeing the images and reading the words that helped each quiltmaker deal with their horror and sorrow. Most of the quilts were made in the USA, but caring people from other countries also sent their love and sympathy in quilted form.

The majority of the quilts were sold at on-line auction to benefit the Families of Freedom Scholarship fund and all of the profits from this book go to the same good cause. Some of the quilts are on a two-year tour so you might be able to see them in the fabric...

A book to be treasured for the beauty of the quilts, the feelings of the quiltmakers and the humanity we share.

Not only is this book is a powerful tribute to September 11, it also contains a wide variety of both traditional quilts and innovative art quilts. All of the quilts were made in the five short weeks following tragedy so they could be displayed at the 2001 International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas on October 31 to November 4, 2002. Many of these quilts are now a part of a traveling exhibit which will be at many quilt shows throughout the country. The book beautifully documents each of the quilts along with the thoughts and feelings of these quilt artists.

This book contains page after page of richly colored Amish quilts in a variety of patterns and settings - literally a rainbow of quilts! At times I found the text to be a bit dry, but the background and historical information was very thorough and definitely worth reading. The author has put together a wonderful, well-rounded collection of quilts that will inspire you to want to make a few of your own. If you are a fan of Amish quilts, you will absolutely love this book!

Sara Miller is Amish and owns her own quilt shop out on the family farm near Kalona, Ia. Who better to have the best collection of Amish crib quilts ever. Crib quilts are used hard and loved to shreds by their owners. These quilts are beautiful rare quilts that have survived childhood. I lost my first book of Sara's quilts that I bought from her at her store 13 years ago. I was very happy to find the current version on Amazon, so I could purchase it again for my quilt reference library. If you love quilts, this book is worth owning.

This book presents beautiful and clear color photographs of the Sara Miller Amish crib quilt collection, combined with the authors' detailed knowledge of the Amish quilting experience. Not having known much previously about Amish quilting, I was surprised by how beautiful and modern in appearance the quilts were. If you love to look at photos of interesting quilts, and are interested in American history, this is an outstanding book.

If you like angels, you will love this book. It has a variety of easy to complex projects, one includes ribbon embroidery. There are so many cute projects, you won't know which one to do first.

I bought this book because of the adorable Raphael angel on the cover. The charts are all large enough and easy to read, and all of the finished projects are a manageable size. I've seen charts of the Raphael angel before but I was discouraged from buying them because they were too large which means you would have to special order the fabric and then spend a fortune framing the finished piece, so I never bought any of them. But this book was "an answer to prayer!" The Raphael angel, of course, is my favorite piece, but there are all kinds and types of angels in here of differnt sizes and incorporating different themes. I appreciate that none of them are too large and that none of them would take very long to complete. If you know someone who loves cross stitch and angels, this book would make a very lovely gift. There is also an adorable angel alphabet. Just think of the many ways you could use that to make various gifts. I was also very fortunate to get this book used, in excellent condition, for a very low price. It is worth buying many of these books used because you can get a substantial discount.

This is my favorite cross stitch book, I've used it for so long and so hard it has compleatly fallen apart! All of the angels are adorable. The charts are clear and easy to read and the patters are easy to adapt to other projects. I stitched my moms name, JOY, with the angels on letters pattern, did the small Raphael Cherub on 32 ct brown linen and compleated the Herb Angel, each project was spectacular!! I would never lend out this book, for fear it would not come home again! Happy stitching!

This is one of the best resources for Anglo-Saxon Crafts on the market. There are numerous subjects and some outstanding photos of archelogocial finds. For anyone interested in Dark Age re-enactment this book is a 'must have'. It is well written, easy to read, and the photos are detailed and clear.

One of the appealing aspects of the A-S period to me is that a lot of the technology is simple enough that I can understand it, when it is clearly explained. Leahy's book does a good job of explaining (with diagrams as well as words) how a pole-lathe, for instance works. His description and depiction of a warp-weighted loom left me saying "I could operate one of those! I see how it works."

The bit about tablet weaving even inspired me to try it. Leahy's book is not a how-to primer in any of the crafts, but again I could see enough to understand the priciple. I found a web-site that give some simple instructions, made myself a set of "tablets" out of a Cheerios box, and got the thing to work!

Of most of the books purchased to aid in Dark Age re-enactment, this one has proven to be the most valuable, the most useful, and most reliable. Clear illustrations, a diverse range of topics and a transparent writing style has made this title probably the most thumbed reference in a stable of well over a dozen regularly used references. Even for those who do not partake in re-enactment, "Anglo-Saxon Crafts" is a fascinating glimpse into the society that provided the roots of modern western civilisation.

I truly adore this book. It comes in a hard case and beautifully bound edition. Author has dones extensive research on the structural and composition of these complicated and intricated Islamic patterns, providing existing examples and computer generated illustrations. You better have a fair grasp of math and geometry if you want to create these images. It is an expensive book but worthy of its price for the scholarly work. Probably the only improvement one can think of adding to this publication is a CD insert with the software that can produce the complex design and forms.

I attended a lecture by Jean-Marc at Microsoft's MOSAIC (Microsymposium on Analysis and Synthesis of Intuitively Conceived Geometrical Art). Castera's work is unique and brilliant. The book is worth it for the hundreds, maybe thousands of giant color plates of Morroccan mosaics alone, and Castera's exposition of the artistic technique and culture of North Africa is excellent.

The core of his work, though, is the mathematical analysis of mosque mosaics, and his rigorous but accessible explanation of tiling rules is fantastic. He goes all the way from how to construct a Solomon's Seal on graph paper to multi-dimensional group theory and back again. I can't say enough good things about Castera's work and this book.

Consider it an investment in a lifetime fascination.

I am the Publisher of this book and I want to inform you, that an English edition is now available "ARABESQUES, DECORATIVE ART IN MOROCCO" since spring of this year. The ISBN n° is 2-86770-124-4.

ACR Edition

I love this book! What a great resource for all skill levels of calligraphers!

This is not just a "how to" book on calligraphy but a how to employ lettering into artwork. Especially helpful was the drafting diagram on page layout. My work looks much more balanced now. Anything that has worked for centuries has to have something to it!!

This book is awesome! I've been doing calligraphy for over 20 years and own nearly 50 books about calligraphy and i must say, this one is the best EVER. It is so inspirational. Before i bought it, i started taking notes and scanning so many pages that i realized i HAD to buy it because there is so much information and inspiration on each and every single page.

I think this is probably the only callig. book i've ever actually read throroughly, from cover to cover -- literally! I read each page (not just skimmed over, as i have with others), but actually read and took notes on.

I was so inspired by this book that i couldn't wait to get started on my own projects.

thank you, Annie Cicale, for creating this wonderful masterpiece!!!

I took one of Barbara's workshops last spring and found her writing to be as charming and open as she was in person. I have received so many compliments on the projects that I have done. I hope that she will forgive me for biting my tongue and taking all of the credit!

I am a professional photographer and a paper crafter and I was already offering custom handmade invitations and announcements. Even with my experience, this was the most informative book on this subject I have ever read. I'm actually buying a second copy of this book so I can keep one intact and cut up the second book to use in my "Visual Journal" (She talks about this in the book)

My only regret is that I live too far to attend one of her workshops.
I can't wait for the second book in this series!

This book is packed with examples of wonderful photos and how to use them. Ms. Smith makes her photographs into incredible cards, albums, stationery...the list goes on and on. The instructions are easy to follow. The list of materials (and where to get them) is extensive. This is more sophisticated than many "how-to" craft books out there--I can't wait to try some of the elegant projects.