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)]

A Bit Of Stitching

Midweek already, would you believe it?

I've not got a card for you today but I have a little bit of my amateur embroidery play :)

This piece takes some influence from the Sea and the eyelet stitching uses a technique from an article by Jean Draper in Oct/Nov Stitch Magazine.

Have a lovely rock pool sort of a day.
Kim

Queen Bee

Something a little different for today, not a card but a picture made from printable fabric.

I had great fun designing the background in Photoshop Elements and then printing it out on printable linen from Craft Computer Paper. I've used hand embroidery, machine embroidery and quilting techniques to finish this picture.


The fabric for the Yo Yo flowers and fence were also designed in Photoshop and then printed on different printable fabrics. The wonderful big button is a vintage button from the lovely Siri - thank you Siri!


The Fimo crown was made using a mould and finished with a touch of gold. The mini-frame is from K&Co - I didn't make it :)


The bees were a little bit of Turkey Rug stitch and the wings were wire on organza hand stitching and then the bees were applied to the picture with a little bit of stump work.


There is nothing like learning as you go along -as many of these techniques are new to me, so I was tickled pink to get a Highly Commended from Crafty Computer Paper for my attempt :)

Have a Bee Buzzy Day
Kim

Didn't We Have A Lovely Time?

Ahhh blog hops, they are great fun and yesterday's Whiff of Joy blog hop and party was fab. Well done to those who won prizes over at the Papercraft Planet chat and if you visit Katharina's blog today you will find out who has won the blog hop prize.

Thank you all who left lovely comments and wasn't there such beautiful makes from the DT and GDT in the hop? Yummy Stamps, Yummy makes. Thank you Katharina for letting me take part in the Anniversary celebrations!

Not a card today but a bit of machine embroidery, this time some quilting work from my course a couple of weeks ago.

Have a lovely Sunday
Kim

Machine Embroidery

Not a card but some machine embroidery today. Creative Machine embroidery courses are like gold dust in the UK at the moment and last week I was very lucky to be at Hampton Court, no less, with some lovely people sharing a little introduction to the subject. The course was run by the Embroiderers' Guild and taught by the amazing Pam Watts.

We all had a wonderful time and I learnt so much it was fabulous. Here is my first make on the course. We had a very busy week I can tell you!

My First Creative Embroidery Piece

In February I dyed some fabric and threads all the colours of the rainbow in my creative embroidery course. Well I've used some of the fabric to make my first piece of creative embroidery that I've taken from first designs principles through to a finished product - Hurrah! And ok, so a four year old child could probably do a better job, but I enjoyed it :)


Card tomorrow - promise ;)

Colours Of The Rainbow

Have you ever dyed threads? I've dyed some clothes in the washing machine before and once dyed a bed sheet for a fancy dress costume where my OH was going to a party in traditional Arabian costume, but never threads for embroidery.

After a delay of a week, due to the snow, we managed to get some dying done in my creative embroidery class and it was such fun! I had a bit of a production line going, as you can see, and managed to dye quite a lot of different threads and some pieces of calico.

Now I need to creatively merge these colourful bits into a project.....MMmmm?

Can't See The Wood For The Trees

I've never tried free machine embroidery before, not a whole project - I've played around with stitching but never actually made something. Well that is until now. The project came from Stitch Magazine issue 49 and was written by Tracy Curtis - the instructions were really easy to follow and inspired me to give it a go. So here is my first attempt at free machine embroidery and it was really fun to do - thanks Tracy.

I've yet to frame the piece but I thought I'ld blog it anyway. It is not a card - but you could make it into a card :)

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