It's a question asked by many budding textile artists: how can I be more creative? You've got a few ideas and know some techniques, but you're not sure how to get started or make your work hang together. This book shows you how. It explains the creative process from the very beginning: where to find inspiration and how to harness those ideas; how to gather source material; how to pull together what you have. The authors then take you on a journey to develop a design. Learn how to put elements together to make a cohesive whole and develop a theme, learning established design rules along the way. Part Three, Moving into Stitch, gives you a range of techniques and easy experiments with which to turn your design into stitched-textile work. From choosing what fabrics to use, to layering, creating texture and adding embellishment, it covers the key techniques to try. This is a terrific book for those starting out in textiles who really do want to be as creative as they can possibly be.

Explore personal transformation through the stitching of dreams and intentions. Anything but ordinary, Mystical Stitches combines the beloved and accessible craft of embroidery with a spiritual element, introducing a rich treasury of 200 magical symbols you can use to set an intention and create personal icons to wear or embellish items in the home. Christi Johnson offers unique patterns inspired by botanicals, animals, numbers, the cosmos, earth elements, zodiac signs, and mythical beasts, for novice or well-practiced crafters to combine into talismans with personal meaning. Johnson’s folk art style is vibrant and unintimidating and provides a framework for bringing spiritual elements into physical form. This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

An evocative exploration of how travel - local and far away - can inform, inspire and enhance textile art. Travel has always featured heavily in textile art, from artists’ ‘travelling sketchbooks’ to large-scale installations mapping coastal erosion or the effects of climate change. In this book, renowned textile artist Anne Kelly shows how to capture your travels, past and present, in stitch, with practical techniques sitting alongside inspiring images. She begins the book by discussing maps in textile art, including their iconography as well as incorporating actual maps into textile work. She then goes on to explore the influence of different cultures from across the globe on textile art. From India and Peru to Scotland and Scandinavia, the book shows how to harness traditional techniques, fabrics, motifs and colours for use in your own work. The chapter ‘Stopping Places’ captures the moments in time on a journey that can be distilled, remembered and documented to create stitched postcards, sketchbooks and other pieces. The final chapter, ‘Space and the Imagination’, explores the possibilities of space travel as a source of inspiration, and covers inner space too, with artists mapping their own emotional journeys. Including a wealth of practical tricks and techniques as well as exquisite photography of both Anne’s own work and that of other leading textile artists, this fascinating book will inspire all textile artists, embroiderers and makers to use past travels to influence their work.