A classic blue-and-white design scheme has timeless appeal, whether used for whole-house interiors or simply to provide a cheerful note here and there.

Charming cushions, delicate curtains, scented sachets, cream-edged organdy tablecloths, and white-ribbon-tied pillowcases: lovely, handmade details such as these help turn a house into a romantic home. Give every room that special touch with 25 beautiful and easy-to-make projects from the experts who know romance. Each item is featured in an exquisite full-color photograph, accompanied by simple instructions that will inspire even the most nervous crafter. Consider reviving a well-loved chair with an elegant slipcover, perhaps in organdy. Personalize pretty napkins for a special holiday table setting. Use basic stitchery to whip up a fabric headboard, gathered lampshade, or linen cutlery holder. The techniques section teaches all the necessary skills, and the templates will guide you. A Main Selection of the Homestyle Book Club.

Shows how to decorate a home in the English country style, with sections devoted to interior rooms and living spaces as well as outside decks, patios, and gardens

Offers suggestions for using the colors blue and white in interior decoration in simple, formal, traditional, and modern settings.

Changes in the routines of domestic life were among the most striking social phenomena of the period between the two World Wars, when the home came into focus as a problem to be solved: re-imagined, streamlined, electrified, and generally cleaned up. Modernist writers understood themselves to be living in an epochal moment when the design and meaning of home life were reconceived. Moving among literature, architecture, design, science, and technology, Machines for Living shows how the modernization of the home led to profound changes in domestic life and relied on a set of emergent concepts, including standardization, scientific method, functionalism, efficiency science, and others, that form the basis of literary modernism and stand at the confluence of modernism and modernity. Even as modernist writers criticized the expanding reach of modernization into the home, they drew on its conceptual vocabulary to develop both the thematic and formal commitments of literary modernism. Rosner's work develops a new methodology for interdisciplinary modernist studies and shows how the reinvention of domestic life is central to modernist literature.

In this richly detailed and imaginatively researched study, Victoria Bynum investigates "unruly" women in central North Carolina before and during the Civil War. Analyzing the complex and interrelated impact of gender, race, class, and region on the lives of black and white women, she shows how their diverse experiences and behavior reflected and influenced the changing social order and political economy of the state and region. Her work expands our knowledge of black and white women by studying them outside the plantation setting. Bynum searched local and state court records, public documents, and manuscript collections to locate and document the lives of these otherwise ordinary, obscure women. Some appeared in court as abused, sometimes abusive, wives, as victims and sometimes perpetrators of violent assaults, or as participants in ilicit, interracial relationships. During the Civil War, women freqently were cited for theft, trespassing, or rioting, usually in an effort to gain goods made scarce by war. Some women were charged with harboring evaders or deserters of the Confederacy, an act that reflected their conviction that the Confederacy was destroying them. These politically powerless unruly women threatened to disrupt the underlying social structure of the Old South, which depended on the services and cooperation of all women. Bynum examines the effects of women's social and sexual behavior on the dominant society and shows the ways in which power flowed between private and public spheres. Whether wives or unmarried, enslaved or free, women were active agents of the society's ordering and dissolution.

Real salutes what the world has to offer. This visually stunning, thought-provoking book is about looking around with awareness, noticing life's quiet details and knowing that the honesty of time changes everything - from a human face, a family home, or a fragile sampler book of antique lace. Real is about the agelessness of integrity; appreciating the imperfect; beauty and our involvement in creating it; acceptance; ancient crafts and craftsmanship; and letting everything age with grace. Illustrated with photographs taken by the author in 27 countries, Real affirms that we are more alike than we sometimes admit—we all have a desire for warmth and love—and that there is dignity in simple things. A detachable fold-out poster is featured inside, which could be used to giftwrap the book or displayed on your inspiration wall.