The stitched landscape An embroidery field guide to the textures, colors, and lines of the natural world

In this inspiring debut guide, fiber artist Hultin teaches crafters how to embroider natural landscapes. She begins by encouraging readers to closely study their surroundings to find a landscape that excites them and then sketch it onto paper. From there, readers can use a fabric marker to trace their design onto cloth, which can then be embroidered with thread. Hultin offers instructions for a variety of basic embroidery stitches, like the back stitch and straight stitch, as well as experimental techniques, like incorporating watercolor and collages of fabric into an embroidered piece. She provides more than 40 designs for landscape features, such as trees, flowers, grasses, and mountains, that readers can replicate in their own compositions. There are step-by-step instructions for several sample landscapes crafters can copy and customize, including a field of California poppies and a tree-lined mountain range, as well as tips for composing an original landscape. Throughout her accessible explanations, Hultin intersperses thought-provoking quotes about nature from writers like Wendell Berry. This will help textile artists find beauty in their everyday surroundings. (Oct.)

While adapting to life as a first-time parent, artist Hultin felt the urge to create but didn't have the energy, headspace, or physical space for sculpture or drawing. Inspired by nature, she found fulfillment in embroidery, a highly flexible and mobile artform that let her create a long-sought balance between the realistic and the abstract. In this debut book, Hultin guides readers step-by-step through making their own threaded landscapes. Like her embroidered pieces themselves, the author's instructions often pair the conceptual and the concrete. For example, the first chapter focuses on observing the natural world, in terms of both developing a practice of noticing everyday beauty and learning how to map the path of the eye over an image. Alongside traditional embroidery techniques, readers will learn how to incorporate other materials and media (such as wool roving and watercolors) to add texture and dimension. A series of increasingly intricate practice projects will help the most anxious embroiderers build enough confidence to experiment. VERDICT Any reader with a creative spirit will get something out of Hultin's warmth and thoughtful lessons, whether it's new insight into materials, techniques, or new ways to perceive the world.--Lauren Seegmiller