The Constance Howard Book of Stitches

Another book from my bookshelf: “The Constance Howard Book of Stitches” by Constance Howard.

This book has been repackaged in recent years with an appealing modern-looking cover. Unfortunately the insides are all still black and white – there was an errata notice in mine saying that the colour plates mentioned were not actually included.

I nearly didn’t delve into this book when I first picked it off the shelf at my guild library, because of the black and white photos. (I do like colour!) But on closer inspection I saw how this book is absolute gold in terms of the inspiration it provides for using stitches in creative and interesting ways.

I was going to borrow it from the library, but then I realised that it would be a book that I would refer to again and again, and decided that I actually needed to purchase my own copy. So I did!

This book was invaluable to me as I created the inspiration stitch panels for my book The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion: a step-by-step stitch dictionary. It prompted me to push my experimentation with stitches much further than I otherwise would have.

I love the way it uses different textured threads, different weights of thread, different scales of stitch… and I even grew to love the fact that all the thread shows up as white (in the black and white photos) because it stopped me from being distracted by colour, and allowed me to only see the stitches.

The book is not very instructional on how to work the stitches. There are some basic instructions, but you will probably want to use another book to teach you the stitches.

However, this book is pure inspiration.