Book Review - The Maison Sajou Sewing Book By Lucinda Ganderton

Book Review - The Maison Sajou Sewing Book by Lucinda Ganderton Published by Ivy Press ISBN 978-1-78240-085-1

Hey guys, I have my thoughts on another stitchery book published by Ivy Press to share with you today. If you have been reading my blog, you will have caught two lovely books from Ivy Press so far, with the Sew Quick, Sew Cute By Fiona Goble full of super cute projects and Sewing With Letters by Nicola Tedman & Sarah Skeate which was full of fabulous typeface inspiration.

This week it is the turn of The Maison Sajou Sewing Book by Lucinda Ganderton another lovely book full of fabulous inspiration that won't disappoint if you are a stitchery fan.

The Maison Sajou is the passion of Frédérique Crestin-Billet and is the brand name of a nineteenth-century French haberdashery that Frédérique has relaunched and built up from her love of French vintage embroidery and paraphernalia. 

The book contains information on materials and techniques with plenty of tips for embroidery enthusiasts. There are also twelve pages of stitch instruction for the various stitches you will need to embroider the projects, and each stitch has at least one diagram of the stitch and in some cases diagrams of each step of the stitch which is very useful if you don't have an embroidery stitch dictionary. 

There are 20 projects in the book all designed by Lucinda Ganderton, the needlecrafter and craft book writer, and as she says in her introduction to the book she wanted traditional projects for the stitcher, the home and the family but with a contemporary spin. 

So you will find projects like a tote bag, tablecloth, sampler cushion and a gadget case included in the mix. All the projects are stepped out with diagrams and instructions for each stage of the making. A beginner could find projects to inspire them from this book but there are also projects with the more experienced embroiderer in mind as well.

But above all I will tell you what my most favourite thing is about this book: Lucinda has included her inspiration or mood boards for some of the projects, which I just love to see. 

As someone fascinated with the creative process, I love seeing the inspiration that triggered an idea and I think it is a great addition to the book and adds even more inspiration and interest to the projects themselves.

The book is hardback with 192 pages, it measures 27 cm x 19.5 cm and is 1.8 cm thick and retails at around £19.99. It is a beautiful read and if you are an embroidery fan or a stitcher wanting some embroidery inspiration to finish your projects then check out this book.

You can find it at Amazon.co.uk or at Amazon.com and if you have it already I would love to hear what you think about it, so do drop me a comment.

Kim

[Disclaimer Time: This is a sponsored book review so I received a copy of the book to review but as with all my blog posts I always try to give you my honest, unbiased opinion. (Prices correct for the date the blog post went live)]

Naughty Or Nice?

Nice I hope? Last year I made some Christmas stockings for myself and my OH from Christmas themed fats. I could try and say that they are post-modern ironic but they are, as you can see, full-on Traditional Christmas Chintz with extra sparkly glitz added on for good measure. Well we wouldn't want Father Christmas to miss them now would we?

Sewing Pot Holders

So what do you think? Do you think that everyone would like to have a pot holder for Chrimbo? :)

Not a card today but some sewing. Really must get some more sewing done. I have just loads of projects in my head but a lot of them seem to just stay there. Do you have that problem too? I have recently joined an embroidery group which is kinda like a knitting stitch and bitch but with embroidery instead :) I am very, very new to embroidery - have an awful lot to learn but that is what makes it fun isn't it?

Sewing Embellishments

I had the urge to do some sewing - a touch of embroidery and this week Papertake Weekly has a stitching theme - real or faux. So here is a little embroidery strawberry for you - not that I am trying to hold onto summer or anything.




Materials:
Paper - made by me
Card - white cardstock
Other - embroidery threads; cotton calico; metal frame; wadding; finemarker

More felt things

Cake, yummy cake - sorry it is made from felt and beads. This one went on the front of a friend's little girl's birthday card.

So a question for you - what do you call them? Cupcakes or fairy cakes :) If you are old enough and from the UK you probably remember them as fairy cakes? We all seem to call them cupcakes now - did that start in the USA? Or perhaps fairy cakes are just the ones with the little sponge wings - do you remember them?

Talking of cupcakes have any of you seen the amazing cupcakes made by Hanita. She posts them on Flickr you must take a look. She has a blog too.

Playing with Felt

I haven't posted any sewing for a while as I've been concentrating on the papercrafts. So I thought I would put one of my felt flowers up. Made from felt, embroidery silk and buttons.



I love working with felt, you can get it in so many colours and it looks fab. This flower is to put on a make-up bag but I'm going to make some smaller ones for cards :)

New Skirt

I have recently bought a new sewing machine. The motor went on my second-hand and very old Frister and Rossman. Having two sewing projects on the go and feeling a bit lost without a sewing machine I bought a new one. Wahoo. And have now completed my skirt (one of the uncompleted projects). Wahoo again.


Now just have to work on the other project......