Stitched Textiles: Landscapes
Using a combination of fabric piecing, with machine and hand embroidery Kathleen presents a variety of textile landscapes, based on some of her favourite places.   Detailed chapters covering design, materials and stitching techniques are beautifully illustrated with Kathleen's work, and five step-by-step projects encourage us to create our own landscape.  An inspiring book, perfect for anyone looking for a new approach to the subject.-East Kent Embroiderers' Guild This is a new series from Search Press of exciting books exploring textiles. Kathleen Matthews shows you how to dye fabric and thread, layer materials for depth, and use machine and hand embroidery to enhance your work. It is a technique used by many textile artists, myself included. There is a good introduction to materials and the design process for the beginner, advanced textile artists might find this too simple. However, these simple ideas are used in this book to produce stunning work. The dyeing section is again for beginners and shows tray dyeing. In Basic Techniques you will find a complete how to project with good step by step instructions and plenty of photographs. This is very easy to follow. In Elements of  The Landscape, you will discover how to translate into fabric and stitch the different elements that will enable you to build a landscape. I particularly like the way Kathleen has painted colour charts from photographs. She explores the elements further in Seasons. The Projects in this book are wonderful. They are easy to follow with step by step instructions and photographs. There are five projects: Autumn Woodland, which is my favourite; Flower Garden; Mountain Lake; Sunset Loch and Lavender Farm. This is a beautiful book that brings all the individual elements dye, fabric, stitch together to make wonderful landscapes.-Yarnsandfabrics.co.uk/crafts If you love painting with a needle then this book is for you. Kathleen has created the most wonderful landscapes with simple dyed fabrics, layering techniques and sumptuous machine embroidery to give depth and a painterly quality to her pictures. Learn how to take a photograph and transform it into your own unique picture with beautifully illustrated steps and clear demonstrations. Definitely one for my bookshelf.-Sewing World Landscapes are perfect subjects for embroidery as they can be interpreted in so many ways. Many of Kathleen's textiles begin with hand-dyed fabrics, which create unusual colours that work well with a variety of techniques. The dyeing process, using Procion cold-water dyes, is clearly explained in step-by-step photos, and the dyed fabrics are layered or cut out and applied to create gorgeous backgrounds. Lines of undulating free machine stitching echo the structure of the landscape, following the contours of the land, creating ripples on water and recreating foliage and flowers. Whether worked by hand or machine, the stitching adds movement and depth to the textiles. There are five complete projects, all clearly illustrated with step-by-step photos. Focusing on each element of the landscape, a wealth of stitched samples illustrate the methods used to create skies, trees and woodlands, rocks and pebbles, and more. This collection of ideas will allow you to create your own favourite landscapes, and, with every view offering an opportunity, you'll be taking your camera everywhere with you.-Stitch In the same series as Stitched Textiles: Flowers, this book shows you how to make landscapes, the inspiration behind some beautiful and fun to make projects. If you have the earlier title and are expecting something in the same style don't: this is a very different book from an artist with a totally different style. All the pieces in this book are quilts to start with although if like this reviewer you do not make quilts the methods are perfect for many other items too. Unless you want to go all the way and dye your own fabrics you don't need much to make the pieces shown here, and most if not all of it will already be in the possession of anybody with a sewing machine. Learn how to design a good composition and lay down scraps of fabric before stitching over them with the machine. It is a simple method but what you do with it decides the merit of the work, I like that. Infinite pictures and designs are possible without much work. The method is shown in many easy stages in Search Press style, with lots of small photos with captions showing what to add to each to make the picture. There are sections on how to portray different landscape elements such as skies, water, trees, hills, buildings etc. and all four seasons shown. Finally, there are five well described and illustrated projects so you can test your knowledge and have a go yourself. Plenty of large format photographs show the works in detail, and all of it had me itching to get started. There is of course a section on dyeing your own cloth and thread if you wish to do so, and even if you don't think how much recycling of odd bits of fabric you can do. One of the best hands-on user friendly books of its kind and definitely a keeper.-Myshelf.com Another in the Stitched Textiles series from Search Press, this book tackles the creation of beautiful landscapes using machine stitching techniques over pieces of cut fabric. If this is an area you are interested in, this book is an excellent reference on how to achieve the effects that Kathleen Matthews creates. There is an introductory section on the basics  -  materials, design, dyeing  -  all of which give a good overall view of how to gather your equipment and get ready for Kathleen's style of work. The book is laid out particularly well, focusing on each key area in landscapes (I couldn't think of any more you might need to know), such as skies, water, fields and grasses, flowers and rocks. In each of these sections, there are fully illustrated steps to creating an effective look to the work. There are several different pictures to illustrate different ways of approaching each. For each picture, there is an in-depth description of what you are seeing and how this is translated into stitch. The pictures are excellent quality and in enough detail that you can see the stitches as described. There are some interesting points, such as remembering reflected shadows on trees, and creating a sense of perspective and dimension. Seasons are also covered in another section and the different colours you will characteristically need for each is also explored. There are several projects at the end, and these are a great way of getting to grips with this technique. A combination of the instructions given in this section, and being able to refer back to the instruction for each key area earlier in the book, make for a great tutorial in this stitching style.-Workshop On The Web