Create shimmering waves with silver thread. Make flowers out of fluffy yarns. Stitch delicate leaves, stars, vines, and more -- no fancy sewing machine required! A world of ideas for easy machine embroidery is packed into this authoritative guide. Book jacket.

Filled with exciting projects, this book is a how-to guide for textile artists looking to learn all the methods and techniques they need to begin "painting with threads" using their own home sewing machine. This is destined to become a classic handbook, with chapters covering all the basics, including tools and materials; methods and techniques; using your sewing machine; experimenting with threads, fabrics, and colors; and creating your own designs and presenting your work. It will inspire enthusiastic beginners with limited textiles skills, as well as engage more experienced textile artists who wish to understand and adopt new techniques. The book is like taking a series of technique-based master classes, with step-by-step photographs to illustrate each stage of the process.

Let your quilting creativity soar with these magical machine techniques! Are you using your sewing machine to its fullest creative capacity? Do you know what each foot can do? Expand your repertoire with machine techniques, embellishment, surface design, and thread painting skill, thanks to your sewing machine. Nine highly qualified, experienced sewing machine educators have developed 13 delightful projects to show you how to make the most of your machine's technical possibilities. From pillows to bed scarves, from wallhangings to table runners, any quilt will benefit when its creator uses these techniques. OUT OF PRINT

"Take your quilts to the next level of creativity by using the decorative stitches built into your sewing machine. Karen shows how to find multiple uses for a single stitch, how to combine stitches, and how to best use threads and stabilizers. Eleven projects serve as practice for getting to know your machine"--Provided by publisher.

It's a question asked by many budding textile artists: how can I be more creative? You've got a few ideas and know some techniques, but you're not sure how to get started or make your work hang together. This book shows you how. It explains the creative process from the very beginning: where to find inspiration and how to harness those ideas; how to gather source material; how to pull together what you have. The authors then take you on a journey to develop a design. Learn how to put elements together to make a cohesive whole and develop a theme, learning established design rules along the way. Part Three, Moving into Stitch, gives you a range of techniques and easy experiments with which to turn your design into stitched-textile work. From choosing what fabrics to use, to layering, creating texture and adding embellishment, it covers the key techniques to try. This is a terrific book for those starting out in textiles who really do want to be as creative as they can possibly be.

Begin an exhilarating journey into the world of drawing and painting with thread and your sewing machine. Thread sketching is a fascinating craft - but where do you begin? This fully revised and illustrated Second Edition of 'Creative Thread Sketching' guides you through everything you need to know. From equipment and tools, fabric selection and setting up your sewing machine, to free motion stitching techniques and problem-solving, this friendly guide shows you how to put all the pieces together. Learn how to create a wide variety of stunning stitched textile art for your home or friends. Popular textile artist, author and blogger Deborah Wirsu includes six free, illustrated projects to help get you started with this comprehensive introduction to creating stunning textile art using fabric, thread, and a domestic sewing machine.

Provides ideas for decorative stitching along with step-by-step instructions.

Knitting is an enduringly popular and creative craft, but many associate the techniques primarily with hand knitting, believing machine knitting to require arcane knowledge. However, machine knitting is formed from the same stitch structures and is equally versatile. Translating between Hand and Machine Knitting rediscovers the potential of domestic machine knitting to open up new possibilities for dedicated knitters, offering an equally creative yet timesaving method of crafting new designs. With over 500 images, this comprehensive guide offers detailed step-by-step explanations of techniques in both hand and machine knitting, whilst also offering inspiration and design advice. Dr Vikki Haffenden, a highly experienced knit designer, technical knitter and educator, shares the knowledge and understanding she has accumulated over a career designing for the knitted textile and knitwear industry and as a lecturer in knitted textile design. Topics covered include: Illustrated step-by-step instructions of hand and machine knitting techniques; Qualities and behaviours of fibres and yarns and their suitability for knitting; Equipment requirements and advice; Basic stitches and stitch constructions of hand and machine knitting; Combining stitches to make surface texture and colour patterns; Shaping and knitting 3D shapes; Calculating garment shape and size from tension swatches. Superbly illsutrated with 397 colour photographs and 130 line artworks.

Full color, highly detailed, step by step instructions for over 70 of Sue Spargo's favorite embroidery stitches.