Holey Stitches Book Review

2017, Gone Stitching, $15.

This charming short book from Gone Stitching serves as a guide for picking stitches for many of the items found in Judaic needlepoint. Sized perfectly for your project bag, it does something no other book on the market does; it selects stitches that are suited to different kinds of items.

Some of the items covered, such as the Star of David and the Torah, will only be found on Judaic canvases. Others, such as the suggestions for doves, wine cups, and candlesticks, can be found on many canvases. A large number of suggestions in the book, such as the stitches for trees and buildings, can be applied to canvases of any kind.

Each area is covered in a one or two page section. On the page you’ll find a few stitch suggestions with large, clear diagrams that sometimes are numbered. The text for each area is written with just the kind of friendly advice you’d want from a shopowner. For example in the section on stitching doves the authors suggest picking the thread first, then picking the stitch according to whether the thread is fuzzy or not.

This kind of approachable advice will make it so easy to use this book and to pick stitches and threads that work together well.

The authors do not shy away from telling you when a type of item is difficult. The first sentence of the section on domes says “In a word, domes are difficult.” After acknowledging this, two wonderful stitch suggestions are provided that will help even a beginner to stitch domes beautifully.

That’s the key to this book, it’s full of great suggestions any stitcher can use to create beautiful needlepoint. It does this in such an engaging way and it does it without losing sight of its purpose to help stitchers with Judaic canvases. It adds to this usefulness with a charted Hebrew alphabet (these are hard to find) and a one-page introduction.

it’s a book well worth getting, even if you are notJewish.