Review: I'm really glad I didn't pay money for this
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 7, 2014
I love crafts and have more stuff in my "stash" than I will ever use up. I bought this book because the pictures on the cover were brgith and pretty and I love flowers. Unfortunately, the pictures inside are not big enough to help understand the directions. One of the patterns called for a Fiskars Creativity System which I had never heard of. I looked it up and it is a die cutting system that one needs to buy additional dies in order to use it. I have had a Cuttlebug die cut machine for many years and have no plans to replace it any time soon so that flower pattern was not something I could make. I already know how to gather a strip of fabric with zigzag stitching over a heavy thread. The book said to use embroidery floss but I have had good luck with dental floss because it almost never breaks so that pattern was not of use to me. The book only has 17 ideas so that is two down. The tissue paper roses made from heart shaped petals are not even pretty. There is one lily pattern that might be of use, it was near the end of the book and I was getting frustrated with the lack of good pictures by then so I was only skimming.One pattern said to fold a strip of fabric in half, iron, open it back up and sew a line of gathering thread down the center. Then refold, cut the edge into scallops and sew the scalloped edge closed. This is when I wanted a bigger picture to see if that is really what they did. Why sew the edge closed? Scallops, even 2" big ones are pretty hard to sew and these were already cut out so the fabric is going to stretch on the curves. It just sounded wrong to me, but since I couldn't enlarge the picture to see how it was done I can only guess--and I won't be doing it.Another pattern was a rose made from a circle of cotton T-shirt fabric cut into a spiral. The instructions said it was being made from felt so we could see it better. The picture with that pattern appeared to me of a fabric rose made of twisted fabric--the instructions said nothing about twisting the fabric around and it was definitely not made of felt.I am so glad this book was free for the day. If they are charging for it now I would suggest you skip it. You can find better instructions on the internet for free.