Rebecca Ringquist’s Embroidery Workshops: A Bend-the-Rules Primer

I just got the book and read the whole thing cover to cover. I skimmed much, like the parts about machine sewing since I just do hand embroidery. But the huge take-away from the whole book is I feel so inspired, I want to sit down and stitch. Rebecca Ringquist had me at the word "embroidery" and I giggled when I got to the very end of the book and saw her picture: she looks like a baby!! (Hm...that doesn't make me sound so good.....) But THEN I glanced over at the little square envelope fastened to the middle of the inside back cover. It looks handwritten with an orange marker: "Sampler inside!" I opened it up and pulled out the most precious thing: ah......here's an actual piece of square cloth upon which she stitched this cool round sampler. It has concentric circles and lines to make these stitches: French knots, chain stitch, couching, spiderwebs, bullion knots, back stitch and running stitch.The VERY cool thing is that this sampler is shown a bit enlarged on all of page 45. It's just called a sampler of hand stitches. There are neat sections of stitches radiating from the middle and then some segments are a riot of texture with thick, colorful fibers. Let's just say she doesn't restrict herself to DMC floss (which she highly touts). As on the piece of cloth in my hand, the outside ring of the circle identifies the stitches of each section. The entire sampler fits into a 6" hoop and you can still see that outer border with the words just inside the hoop. She has happily left a few of the segments only partially stitched which gives you a sense of immediacy and even intimacy: it looks like she just set it down to answer the phone and will be right back to finish it.Then something dawned on me. I hiked back to rousing Introduction and across it, on page 9, she shows the BACK of the sampler in the hoop!!! Whoo hoo hooooooo...is it ever messy!!!From the Intro on, Rebecca (I guess we're on a first name basis) really punches the creative juices simmering in us. She tosses out the rules of young colonial sampler-makers which instilled "perfection, patience and politeness." Instead, she EMBRACES a messy back. She ENCOURAGES using knots that show through so it gives you something to stitch over and add layers to. She ENTHUSIASTICALLY wants to get you drawing and stitching. For once, an artist whose identified medium is embroidery doesn't get you all intimidated with designing. She recommends grabbing fabric that already has designs on it like polka dots: maybe you can use different stitches or colors inside each one...or maybe outline the border of each dot...or maybe play connect-the-dots. Whatever strikes your fancy.I love vintage and antique books and honor our embroidering forebears who paved the way for us. I love 30-45 yo books that either expanded into embroidery around the world or drilled down into one complex technique like goldwork or hardanger. I love many of the very recent books because they are fresh and really accessible.Rebecca Ringuist is an author to keep your eye on. This is a good book.

I am so disappointed that the kindle version doesn't come with a link to a PDF version of the sampler to print off. In fact, the pages about the sampler project are simply omitted from the kindle version. Considering that both formats are almost the same price, I find this very upsetting!!Otherwise the book is very inspiring.

The information in the book is good but the most helpful part of the entire thing is the sampler! I’ve just completed it and definitely got in some good practice. There was too much space for couching so I added in some satin stitches, split stitches and stem stitches in those places. I found myself just YouTubing stitches to learn them instead of trying to learn though the book. I found that a lot of my stitches turned out crooked because I was following the crooked lines on the sampler- this drove me crazy!! I would much rather have had clean lines to work with- sloppy isn’t really my style. Moral of the story: the book has great info, but you can learn just as easily making your own sampler

The book has a sampling of stitches, but not that many. And the author admits to searching out old embroidered pieces and cutting them up and/or adding more stitches to it. I don't agree with that. To me those are heirloom pieces, not something to be butchered so you can say "see what I did".

There is a lot I like about this book. It teaches a wide variety of stitches and tells you upfront that the old rules of embroidery don’t have to hold you back. I also loved the idea of a sampler to practice stitches on. It seemed like a fun project and I did get better at some of them.On the other hand, stitching the sampler drive me INSANE! I’ve been learning embroidery for about a month now and all the projects I’ve done have big designs and lots of room. This sample has tiny little stitches that require a level of patience I don’t have. The blanket stitch area and the woven picots were areas I just gave up on. They shapes were ridiculously small and focusing that hard just wasn’t worth it. I also agree with another review that there are too many couching stitch lines.It all comes down to personal preference. I loved learning more stitches and seeing a wide variety of projects. However, I’m glad I didn’t use this book when first learning because I would have been totally turned off.If you like tiny stitches and really focusing on where your needle has to go, this is for you. She has had a boho, funky style that I’m not that into but I appreciate the variety and it is interesting to see what can be done.

I should say now that I have an MA in textiles and taught it on a degree course in a previous life. Still, I have been out of it for a while, after relocating, retiring early and settling into a new home - curtains and blinds being the only stuff I have made lately. I slightly agree with one reviewer in feeling its a pity Rebecca did not include more pics of her scrummy work - and maybe a slightly more academic/less project based approach. But then, given that, this is aimed at a younger audience who maybe have not stitched previously before. Given this, I would say some of the early information and exercises are along the lines that I would have given students myself - so not a bad introduction at all. Also, coming to hand embroidery (I tended to concentrate on machine work in my own work in the past) as doer this time rather than a tutor, at the end of a stressful period in life, I actually found the book quite charming on many levels. If this gets new people sewing, then thats fine by me, and its got me going again too, which can't be bad. I would though, love to see perhaps another book by her in the future, concentrating on her own original work and documenting her ideas, sketchbooks and personal development within textiles, that would be fascinating to see.

This book did not live up to its promise for me.It was not possible to see much of the book before purchase....usually I will not buy when I have not been able to see much inside,but in this case the pages available seemed to be what I wanted.Unfortunately the rest of the book was not.The book would be good as a guide for some basic stitch techniques but,for me,it didn't provide the visual stimulation I hopedfor,so I returned it.

Unusual book, sparks lots of ideas Nice presentation and images through books. Recommend it ( and i bought after it was recomended to me!!)

Many different things to try and experiment with.

I love this beautiful book.General:Beautiful, colourful, non-judgmental, encouraging, and well laid out. It contains stitches and project suggestions that are interesting, clever, and practical. Unlike some books that have ancient patterns that would be out of place today, or are simply pointless (like a cuff label for your jar of threads/floss), this book has things I can USE. Coaster, potholder (trivet), necklace, stitch sampler, and some simple but beautiful and smart accents (that you can apply to anything, not just the pattern, but the concept, which I hadn't seen before). Have I waxed rhapsodic enough? Her enthusiasm is infectious, what can I say, and I haven't embroidered in a week or more, but thinking about this book to review it making me feel crafty!And bonus: the writer is clearly and avowedly thrifty, so another excellent thing about this book is that it's budget conscious throughout. A big plus for me.Supplies/materials:I usually don't read materials sections of embroidery books because either I know it, or I'm not buying something expensive like some books seem to require (ie. embroidery sewing machine). I actually read this book from start to finish, and the supplies section was well laid out and did teach me things, plus since the whole book it budget-conscious there are things like tips on how to keep your fabric from slipping through the hoop that doesn't require buying a new one. This section also inspired me to get a set of backing materials (Fabricland had a 50% off sale!), which has really expanded what I thought I could do with embroidery.Stitches:I already knew the majority of these stitches, except bullion knot and the woven ones. It makes couching stitches far more attractive than any other embroidery book I've examined so far. It has the usual suspects for hand stitches, and does include some machine embroidery, but not to an extent that it's a waste if you don't do that sort of thing. In fact Ringquist makes machine embroidery seem so easy and explains how you can do it without an embroidery machine, which has really inspired me :) (I don't have my own sewing machine at the moment, but now I don't feel like I'd have to buy 2 machines to sew and embroider!)Drawings:I found two minor inconsistencies between the described stitching instructions, and 2 of the drawings.Bullion knot: it says at one point to take the needle down, but leave a loop of thread on the surface, and come up at the start of the stitch; in the image the needle didn't go all the way through before coming back up at the start of the stitch, so it's still attached to the loop, and that really, really confused me. For a video visual I suggest [...]Buttonhole/blanket stitch: The drawing has included at the far right a stitch that must be a single stitch not involved in the buttonhole/blanket stitch; if you ignore it, or know that going in (it's not described in the written portion), then the image makes perfect sense.Sampler:I haven't used the sampler yet, but I look forward to it :) So far I've been working on my own because I don't have the perfect size of hoop for the sampler. I do like the look of it though, and if you're interested in seeing some or buying them individually, check out Ringquist's Etsy shop "dropcloth" for added fun.Overall: this is not a stitch dictionary, but it still taught me things, and inspired me more than my other 3 embroidery books by a mile. The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because the drawings of the bullion stitch genuine had me puzzled for a ridiculously long time, even after I'd accomplished it a few times by following the written instructions. Numbers on that drawing would be helpful, or a description that matches exactly with the associated image.