Description
Twisty Stitches Volume 1: Amadeus-Jessica
by Carole Lake & Michael Boren
You CAN do these stitches! Twisty Stitches offers you step-by-step, stitch-by-stitch, big-enough-to-see photos of how to do some of the more challenging needlepoint stitches. Learn not only how to do the Amadeus, Double Fan and Double Fan Doubled, Eight Point Star, Jessica, Crescent, and Chilly Hollow stitches, but move on to dozens of charted variations. These are gorgeous stitches in a fabulous all-color, spiral-bound book that will bring your needlepoint projects to the next level of fabulousness.
- 52 pages
- spiral binding
- full color
- 8.5″ x 11″
- published 2016
About the authors
Needlepoint designers and teachers Carole Lake and Michael Boren may be some of the most popular needlepoint collaborators in recent decades. Together, they were StitchPlay Designs — the word “play” in their name shows you their inspirational attitudes. Carole passed away in 2024, but we are fortunate to still have their extensive knowledge in these books. Keep them handy in your stitch library, and these brilliant teachers will be ever by your side.
Book review
By Jane/ChillyHollow
Why? Because the stitches Jean Hilton created and made famous are involved and intricate and there is no better source available for understanding how they are done correctly. I own one of Jean’s book that diagrams the stitches she came up with but it is thirty years old. The newest variations aren’t covered and it is hard for me to understand in places. Computerized graphs have come a long way in 30 years. I am not good at counting so these intricate layered stitches are confusing for me. I need a lot of help. Twisty Stitches provides it.
Carole and Michael’s Twisty Stitches Volume One covers how to work the Amadeus, Chilly Hollow, Crescent, Double Fan, Double Fan Doubled, Eight Point Star and Jessica Stitch plus a great many variations of each. For example, the Amadeus is diagrammed in 21 steps (with a numbered black and white diagram and 21 little color photos of stitched example of all 21 steps). There is also a color photo of the finished stitch and a color photo of the back side of the canvas when this is worked correctly. The only way you are going to understand this stitch better is if Michael and Carole are sitting on either side of you, cracking jokes and explaining what you are to do with each and every step that creates the arrow shape of an Amadeus Stitch. Then the book diagrams (also with a numbered chart and a color photo) seven variations of the Amadeus! The authors show you how to create an Amadeus heart, two triangles, a shorter and fatter arrow shape, a bat wing shape, and both a tongued Amadeus and a rounded Amadeus arrow. Plus there is a photo of the classic Amadeus so you can compare it to its seven cousins.
It’s brilliant!
More from the book review here.
