Compendium of Sewing Techniques

Lorna Knight specialized in textiles at Queen Margaret University College in Edinburgh. After working as a designer's assistant, she spent ten years teaching Design and Technology in middle schools in the UK before setting up a business designing and making lingerie and running workshops teaching a wide range of sewing skills. She continues to run workshops which involve passing on hints and tips from both the couture and high street fashion worlds, enabling her students to create their own garments and projects. Lorna also writes regularly for Sewing World magazines and has contributed to many sewing books and other fashion sewing publications.

Mar 10As the introduction to this book says, you can never have too much sewing knowledge. This book contains over 250 tips, techniques and trade secrets to make your sewing easier, more professional and more fun whatever your level of expertise. A quick glance at the chapter headings will give you an insight into what this book contains. Starting off with tools and equipment, it continues through materials, stitches, sewing techniques and finishes up with decorating fabrics. As with a lot of other Search Press titles the book starts off by showing you how to get the most out of it by looking at page layouts, and what they contain. One of these is a useful fold-out flap at the back with a conversion table for seams, and other highlights include "fix it" hints, "try it" inspirations and "make it" staged projects. Whether you want to know what needle to use for a particular fabric, purchase the best iron or find out how to do appliqué it is in this useful book, which certainly taught this person (who designs for a sewing magazine and has taught dressmaking) a fair number of things. At the same time it is a great friend for anybody new to sewing, and I wish that I had owned it back when I started as it answers so many questions. Naturally everything isn't in here, but I don't think any single book is that big for a huge topic like sewing. Highly recommended for the keeper shelf.

• Introduction 6About this book 6Tools and equipment 8Material matters 32In stitches 56Sewing techniques 76Decorating fabrics 120Glossary 154Resources 155Index 156Fold-out flap 159Credits 160