If you have ever wanted to play with walnut ink and didn’t know where to start, here’s a booklet that will help you immensely. Explore new and old techniques to get your creativity flowing. This booklet tells you about walnut ink and what to do with it. There are ideas for texture, adding colour, paper casts and experimentation. Try walnut ink on a variety of surfaces.

Let’s Play With The Flower Stitcher

This is a creative book showing how to use a flower stitcher. The flower stitcher is a foot attachment that fits most sewing machines. It’s a versatile attachment and Dale will show you how to use it. Dale creates some very exciting and interesting pieces as evidenced by the front cover of this booklet.

Surface Tension

This is the biggest booklet and is subtitled ‘Embellish and Stitch for the Creative Artist’. Explore the real possibilities of the embellisher machine. Dale plays with different materials and there’s lots of photos so that you can see all the experiments. There’s also a gallery of other artists’ work. It shows the basics of layering and meshing fabrics, felting, creating backgrounds, creating cloth, knitted fabric that is embellished, loops and using your embellished pieces.

All Dale’s work is highly creative and experimental. I have seen her wonderful wearable art pieces in Quilting Art magazine too. She never disappoints. I’m looking forward to more of her booklets. Dale runs The Thread Studio in Australia.

Textile Adventures mixed media and stitch by Isobel Hall, softback published by Isobel Hall Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9569029-0-0, price 17.00.

Isobel promises an adventure and delivers one. Experiment to your heart’s content and produce your own unique projects using the techniques. The instructions for the techniques are easy to follow. New ideas for using relatively inexpensive mediums – some found in the kitchen. This is a technique book and not a how to complete projects book. However, there are plenty of very good photos of finished items. Bowls, bags, journal covers and more. You’ll enjoy the inspiration this book has to offer. Not for the absolute beginner, but for everyone else who loves textiles and experimenting.

Learn to Spin by Anne Field, published by Search Press. ISBN 978-1-8448-766-0, price 19.99available from www.searchpress.com

This book is great for beginners with its step by step instructions and photographs. It contains much information from animal fibres to spinning wheels and I was surprised how thorough the book is. It covers fibres other than wool. It seems that it would be useful for more than the beginner. It also contains patterns for knitting, weaving and crochet. All manner of spinning processes is covered including different wheels and spindle plus carding and other practices. This is thorough enough to be your stand-by spinning reference.

Handmade Silk Paper by Kath Russon, softback published by Search Press. ISBN978-0-85532-893-1, price 9.95 available from www.searchpress.com

This book provides the basic techniques of dyeing silk fibres and making silk paper. The book goes on to show how would include petals or other inclusions, use other fibres, mould the paper around a bowl and more decorative ways to use silk paper.  It is well illustrated with photographs of techniques and finished products. This is an excellent beginner’s primer.

Fabulous Fabric Paint by Monique Day-Wilde  & Angie Franke, softback published by Metz Press in South Africa. ISBN 1-919992-21-9, price 12.99 in the UK available from www.searchpress.com

This is a fabulous book about dyeing that I really enjoyed. It has all you need to know about materials plus lots of different techniques for dyeing including all the favourites such as tie-dye, stencilling, stamping, sun prints and screen printing to name a few. It also explores special effects such as wood grain. There are step by step instructions for the techniques and lots of projects to make. I found it easy to use.

Inspired Velvet with Angie Hughes, by Colouricious, price 17.99 available from www.beckmanndirect.com

Angie has a definite style and works with velvet, paints and stabilisers to produce unique works of art. She shows so many techniques in her layered textiles. Use paints, foils, sweet paper foils and organza to create depth in your work. Every process is fully explained. This is a good tutorial for learning different techniques and finding out how they work on velvet.

Inspired Recycled Reborn DVD by Colouricious, price 17.99 available from www.beackmanndirect.com

The team at Coloricious, together with Marilyn Pipe must have had great fun making this DVD. It includes many ways to make old, worn out fabrics into something new. It demonstrates various techniques to dye, burn, stitch and so on. I love Marilyn’s rag bags – you do not even need thread or needle to make these. Jamie even comes up with a way to transform tea bags into a tea cosy. Find ways to use all those left over bits of cotton, thread and even dishcloths with holes. An inspired way to make new fabrics from old.

Fabric Art Collage by Rebekah Meier, softback published by CT Publishing. ISBN 978-1-57120-580-3, price 26.95 USD available from www.ctpub.com. Also available as an ebook.

What first strikes me about this book is the ideas for using small scraps and fabric leftover from larger projects. I’m also struck by the artist’s use of colour. I love working in layers because it makes your work look more complex than it is, and Rebekah is a mistress of this technique. The instructions for all the techniques are clear and easy to follow. Even if you know some of the techniques, I still think this book is worth having for Rebekah’s wonderful work. She works with a wide variety of fabric and different ways of applying colour. I love the paper buttons in the embellishments section. There are lots of wonderful ideas to experiment with here including a superb section on embossing fabric. Enough to give you a taste of whether you want to go into something in more depth. The book finishes with lots of ideas for small projects including quilts. Brilliant.

In the Loop Knitting Now by Jessica Hemmings, softback published by Black Dog Publishing. ISBN 978-1-906155-96-4, price 24.99 available from www.blackdogonline.com

This is not a knitting pattern book. Instead it tracks the position of knitting as an art form today. It offers perspectives on knitting, mainly as a textile art across the world. Theme-wise, it reminds me of a very similar book I reviewed some time ago – Knitting Art from Voyageur Press, which in my opinion is the better book. However the content is different even if we are going over the same tracks – knitting to make an artistic statement and expanding the boundaries of knitting. Amongst the essays, Sandy Black’s name will be well-known.

Digital Imagery on Fabric by Ruth Brown, softback, spiral bound, published by S C Publications. ISBN 978-0-9554647-1-3, price 24.50 available from www.stonecreeksilk.co.uk

What first struck me about this book is Ruth Brown’s attention to detail in all things. This book is on good quality paper with a spiral binding, so it lays flat – essential for any craft book. Ruth also pays the same detailed attention to the content of the book. You can tell that it is important to her that she understands her subject thoroughly and that she passes this knowledge on. Once you have the basics you will then be able to go on and experiment and come up with your own unique prints. If you are interested in printing onto fabric and have found that some books leave you bewildered – this one will clarify all you need to know about printers, transferring an image, how to get the best image and how to use Photoshop Elements. Clear text, written so that everyone can understand and illustrated with colour photographs throughout.