Another Review at MyShelf.Com

 

Little Flowers In Silk and Organza Ribbon
Di van Niekerk and Marina Zherdeva

Search Press
28 April 2014/ ISBN 9781782211044
How-To Books / Embroidery

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

 

Two ribbon embroidery enthusiasts have got together in this book to share their passion for their very special form of this craft. The three dimensional pictures depict flowers made from ribbon with the addition of embroidery floss, beads, fabric and wire.

This is a book to sink into, a veritable box of delights. Despite the advanced nature of the projects – they all look like work only a professional would be able to tackle – the wonderfully clear instructions and staged photographs make it all doable. There are lots of tips and tricks in here to get the most out of the materials, and before you actually make anything plenty of instruction on making stems from wire, creating a non-fray glue from melting soluble fabric, working with beads to create seed pods, embroidering tiny insects and more. You can have a practice making all these things before you make them in earnest for the projects themselves, a great idea. Each of the eight projects show in exhaustive detail exactly what to do and what you need to get and covers several pages. This is the cloth and thread counterpart to the step by step painting books, and like them it works. You truly can go from somebody who has never thought about making three dimensional ribbon flowers with wire stems, replete with embroidery worked in both ribbon and floss to somebody who has just done it. I know, as a fair bit of all this I had never done before myself and now can. At the very back are several excellent and simple drawn diagrams of the various stitches used and no words are needed. It is all very impressive, and a great way to learn a lot surprisingly quickly. Probably the best craft book of 2014.

If you cannot find a good range of ribbons locally try www.searchpress.com for a list of suppliers. Website links are given in the book for those in South Africa and Russia.

Reviews of other titles by Di van Niekerk

Dreamscapes in Ribbon Embroidery and Stumpwork
Embroidered Alphabets With Ribbon Embroidery
Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies in Ribbon Embroidery and Stumpwork
Little Flowers In Silk and Organza Ribbon
Monograms and Words in Ribbon Embroidery

UK Reviewer: Rachel Hyde's work can be found in The Bead Magazine, Making Jewellery and www.craftsuprint.com/rachel-a-hyde/
Reviewed 2014
© MyShelf.com