Hand Embroidery Dictionary: 500+ Stitches; Tips, Techniques & Design Ideas

This clearly shows all the stitches I could ever hope to learn! There's also truly lovely ways to use these stitches to make beautiful works of embroidery stitching. Christen Brown's book is exquisite!

This is a wonderful stitcher's reference, even includes right- AND left-hand views. The contents lets you find stitches by groups, which is handy when you want a bit different chain stitch, for example. Soooo many stitches, it's fun to open it up and browse, too.

I got tired of buying these basic stitch books and intermediate-complexity books so I decided to give this one a shot. I’m so glad I did! The Kindle version is great, because every reference to a stitch has a hyperlink, so I can skip around as I need to put together the multi-layered stitches without giving myself paper cuts. Great instructions for lefties and righties, and does a good job of covering everything from the most basic to most complex. Good photos, and superb illustrated diagrams that are much more clear than some other books I’ve read.

The first pages of the book shows every stitch in the book, puts them in families, and then the page number under each stitch to locate the instruction quickly. There are easy to follow diagrams of each sub stitch to create the final intricate stitch. Easier stitches are also clearly diagramed. If you are an embroiderer, crewel artist, and/or wool person this is the book for you. I certainly wish I'd had this book years ago, now the future looks bright not having to refer to multiple sources for the stitch I want to make.

I have a bazillion embroidery stitch books. I was looking for something that contained all of the stitches I normally use to embellish crazy patchwork all in one place. This seems to do the trick. There are lots of stitches, all familiar to me. Directions are easy to follow, the format of how to do the stitches is pretty standard. I like the fact it has colored photos of the actual stitch when completed. 4 stars because there is no alpha listing of the stitch name and page number--no glossary per se. You have to know the category your stitch belongs to then look at a picture to find the how-to page number. For instance, the Pistil Stitch is included with straight stitches. I would have included it with knotted stitches, because you have to knot the stitch. Similarly there is no instruction for French Knots with Stalks. This is similar to a Pistil stitch yet different. I buy all craft books as real books, rather than in Kindle format. If this book is ever updated, I highly recommend the author include an alpha listing of the stitches with the page number.

I have always used the A-Z Embroidery and this book has been added to my carry it around books. I do 2-3 mostly 2 thread designer designs on towels and pillowcases. To make visually attractive designs I need many different flowers and unique small space fillers and this book offers many attractive bugs and flowers. I recommend this book even to the experienced embroider.

I first had this book from my library looking for some new direction with my stitching. To my surprise there was direction for left and right handed stitches. All of the 500 stitch directions! I am left handed and sometimes it is not easy to convert a stitch in my head. I bought this book and have tasked myself to learn many of these stitches. Thank you for your book.

This hand embroidery book has clear directions for every stitch. It is probably the best of the currently published embroidery stitch books I have come across. I finally understand how to do the chevron stitch! As someone who has been stitching since I was six, I liked that a beginner or a seasoned stitcher could benefit from this book.

I wish I could return the Kindle version of the book and buy the paperback version. I find that the Kindle version is not very user friendly when looking for stitches and what variations they can do. When you want to look at the entire thing at a glance and not have to follow each link to see each one and then jump back to see the next one. Very time consuming and confusing.

Inspiring

I love this book, I have been embroidering for many years but I sometimes I forget how to stitch some stitches. This book has great instructions and pictures to show you how. love it!