Customer Reviews

Beginner's Guide to Blackwork

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you'd rather do blackwork than read about it, this is the book for you. This book is the best I've seen for blackwork patterns. These have a distinct medieval style to them which I love. The book includes graphs and photos of the finished motifs which I find helpful. Blackwork is relatively simple and one need not agonize over a few stitches and fabric choices. This book makes you want to pick up the needle and get started.

This book is very well written. It includes not only basics for the beginner, but wonderful charts for the experienced stitcher to work from. There is a brief history of blackwork. The section covering materials and equipment needed does a good job of briefly covering the items most commonly available to all stitchers. Other sections include: laying out a design, choosing fabric, tips on stitches and framing your finished piece. There are around 100 charts in the book including fill-in patterns, borders, and an alphebet. All in all, a great source book.

While the motifs are interesting and the sampler illustrations so clear a chart is not necessary, this is NOT a beginner's book. It only illustrates three simple stitches the running stitch, back stitch and cross stitch. The first two stitches are illustrated using the simplest technique of a straight line. If you find a pattern in the book with only straight lines, let me know. It does not explain how to map out the running stitch (the original blackwork) nor how to make the pattern reversible on the back side. Most of the patterns are complicated and I presume use the back stitch which is not nearly as neat. I also presume the patterns are not intended to be reversible and so no discussion references this technique. There are no charts which illustrate to a beginner how to stitch along the pattern making the back side as neat and tidy as possible. While I love the book for its authenic flavor in patterns, I am very disappointed in the lack of any explanation how to work truly reversible blackwork using the running stitch.

I've just started doing a blackwork project, because I found a free chart on the Classic Stitches (based in Scotland) website, and now I'm hooked. The author did a very good job on presenting different fill-in stitches, borders, and motifs. I did not like the finished pieces he used as examples as well as finished pieces that I've seen in other books, but there are so many motifs to choose from that you could easily create your own samplers. The examples he used of finished pieces are so clear, that you can see the little blocks in the material. You could work right off from the example without even needing a corresponding chart to go with it. It is an excellent introductory book, and I will use it for years to come.

Lesley Wilkins includes charts for 90+ borders, 80 fill-in patterns, three motif samplers and one alphabet.

Charted example of how to use fill-in patterns, and all the expected supplies, starting, finishing and framing are included as well.

Definitely not for the never-stitched-before-beginner, but I think a few online tutorials would bring one up to speed.

Oh, and there are specific books for reversible blackwork and this one never claims to include that information.

I agree with all the glowing comments of previous reviewers. This is my new favorite book; this is the first review I've ever written, so you know I feel strongly about this! Favorite features: straightforward presentation of info, extremely clear pictures. I'm off to buy her other book ("Traditional Blackwork Samplers") right now.

This is an informative reference book regarding blackwork. I would have liked more historical information on the art, but the patterns included can be used many different ways and don't see too difficult.

I bought this book as a gift for a women who loves blackwork and does it for historical clothing. She was delighted by this book. When I looked through the book I noticed that there were many designs, and a great discussion on many of the core concepts and techniques of blackwork.

If you are a sewer interested in historical blackwork, this is the perfect book for you.

It may help to have done some embroidery or sewing before, but this book does include a few pages on each topic of: what tools and supplies you need, how to set up your work, where to begin, how to embroider and how to frame your work. There are some but not many photos of historic pieces and many photos of what I take to be the author's work as examples. The majority of the book are pictures of the finished work with a stitching chart on the opposite page. These are very clear, unlike the poor quality of some older books, and could be photocopied and enlarged. They do not show the direction in which to stitch to make your work reversible; however, a crafty person should be able to figure that out without specific directions.

I wish this had been the first blackwork book I had bought! It shows enough historic samplers and bands to keep me busy for a number of years. I am a reenactor and I want to make my own blackwork bands to sew onto shirt collars and cuffs, after I practice on some samplers. They would also make nice gifts.

I love this book. I don't think I will ever do a complete bodice of blackwork, however, if I wanted to THIS is the book to have. This is a book to show you how to do the stitches right. Make a sampler, put on a collar, a small band on a child's dress. But take your time and make an heirloom for someone. Make something beautiful with this book . ENJOY !!!