Landscape Stitches — book review

This delightful book from Little House Canvas Company came out earlier this year and has been a huge success. Small enough to fit into your stitching bag, but with over 370 stitches, it’s a great find. It took me awhile to get my copy and then a while longer to try out the innovative stitches in it.

And now I’m hooked. There is so much information packed into the book. First it is organized so nicely, by the types of things you see in landscapes: grass, sky, clouds, rocks, etc.

Every category has a bunch of stitches in it six to a page in small but very clear diagrams. At the beginning of each chapter there is a page of suggestions on how to use the stitches.

Two things intrigued me about the stitches and compelled me to try them out. First there were so many stitches I didn’t know. When you realize I have just about every stitch dictionary out there and have close to 500 stitches charted on my computer, you’ll understand why this was a surprise. Second most of the stitches needed two different threads. I just wasn’t sure how well this would work.

So I’m trying it out on a Mission from ABS Designs. It has a sky, shrubbery, grass, soil, and a driveway I decided to do in one of the stone stitches. For some areas I used only one thread for both threads in the stitch. For others I used two threads.

The results are wonderful. The canvas has many more textured stitches on it than I would have done before the book. And, even though I picked them pretty much at random, they all go together. They also all look good, whether in one thread or two.

An iPhone/iPad/iPod version of the book will be out in November and I can’t wait.

Buy this book, it’s amazing.

Now can we get another one?