Library: Erica Wilson's Embroidery Book

As far as embroidery books go, Erica Wilson is queen. Her books are thorough (This 1976 copy has 350 pages) full of images, and walks you through each and every stitch step by step. There's really only a few kinds of stitches, combined in different ways to get thousands of results. When I'm creating embroidery designs, I like flipping through this book to get inspired by these super complicated stitches that are rarely used now,

She shares more modern embroidery alongside ancient textiles and European paintings containing embroidered textiles, thoroughly covering the history of European embroidery, and even a little of other continents (rare for books of it's time). It's got shisha (indian embroidery using mirrors) it's got stump work (super 3-D embroidery techniques that literally pop off the fabric) it's got needlepoint (not my thing, but the filler patterns are inspiring to look at) it's pretty much got everything. Also, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the post, just enjoy for a minute that magazine cutout stuck in the back of the book. The biggest delight in purchasing old books is finding clues from their former lives wedged in their spines... love.

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