The Complete Stitch Encyclopedia by Jan Eaton

Another review of a book from my personal bookshelf: “The Complete Stitch Encyclopedia” by Jan Eaton.

This book is an excellent reference for those who want to see a lot of different stitches. It has a wealth of information, and there are surface stitches, counted stitches, insertions and edgings. Each one has their own photograph of either the finished stitch or the stitch during construction, and a paragraph or two about the stitch.

The book is divided into text pages and image pages. Each text page has information about the stitches that follow on the image page, including alternate names and a quick description of how to work the stitch. Because the written information is on one page, and the accompanying photo on the next, it does mean that you have to flip back and forth a bit. Perhaps this could have been better organised.

The photos are generally quite clear, though often only having one photo for each entire stitch process does mean that you have to glean a fair bit of information from the written instructions. For those of us who are used to step-by-step stitch directions in the style of Country Bumpkin’s A-Z books, this takes a bit of getting used to. There are a few stitches in this book that I just could not figure out from the text and diagram combined – there just wasn’t enough information. I find this a good book to look up stitches or get ideas from, then go elsewhere to learn how to do them.

All the stitches in this book are separate from each other. There are no pictures showing them combined, or used for any particular purpose. This is not a book to inspire creative use of stitches; it shows them in isolation only.

Despite these drawbacks, the range of stitches is what makes this book so good. There are just so many, and with the stitches grouped as they are, it makes interesting reading figuring out which stitches are related.

In summary, I wouldn’t rely on this book to teach me new stitches, but I do look to it as a good place to find new ones.