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WORK TITLE: Simple Patchwork Projects: 20 Animal-Themed Projects to Sew & Quilt
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
Lives in England.
RESEARCHER NOTES: N/A
PERSONAL
Female.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Crafter and writer. Craft Yourself Silly, founder.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
A crafter and writer based in northeast England, Hayley Smith creates designs and patterns for a variety of crafts. As founder of Craft Yourself Silly, she produces and sells a range of her bestselling Tessepatch kits, supplies, and tools for retailers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, as well as for online and television shopping channels such as Ideal World, Create & Craft TV, and Hochanda.
Proggy Menagerie
Smith published the 2017 Proggy Menagerie which provides instructions on making three-dimensional rag-rug projects. Known as “progging” in the northeast of England, the technique, which involves cutting fabric into strips and pushing it through holes in Hessian backing to create two-dimensional mats, has been adapted to form three-dimensional stuffed animals.
Animal designs include woodland creatures, farm animals, pets, and water babies. Smith adds information for adapting backing, filling, and eye material for making safe soft toys for children and pets, as well as doorstops and draft blockers.
Simple Patchwork Projects
In 2018, Smith published Simple Patchwork Projects: 20 Animal-Themed Projects to Sew & Quilt. The art of cutting, placing, and sewing fabric scraps together to produce crafts, patchworking is a creative way to make appliqué projects. In the book, Smith provides step-by-step instructions to make animal-shaped crafts for the home and for pets. She describes the tools and materials needed, offers templates to motifs and interlocking patchworks, describes various fabrics that can be used, and provides color and black and white photos and illustrations for guidance.
The various animal designs include a Scottie dog for a pillow cover, a herd of sheep for a nursery, a cow teapot cover, an angelfish brush cover, and Labradors for a tote bag. Other designs feature cats, foxes, and chickens. Rather than presented as a basic hexagon shape, the animal shape motifs are designed to be interlocking so you can mix and match animals. You can also use the templates individually to incorporate your own designs and make customized crafts. Some templates can be enlarged to make bigger projects.
Calling Smith’s projects cute and graphically sophisticated, a writer in Publishers Weekly remarked: “Smith calls out sewists’ inner M.C. Escher to take patchwork skills to a new level.” The writer also noted how some animal shapes are so geometric that it may appear that they don’t always seem like shapes of animal. According to the writer, written instructions are clear, accompanying photos help readers understand the instructions, and techniques for tools and fabrics are provided for steps like cutting, basting, fastening, and embroidering.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 16, 2018, review of Simple Patchwork Projects: 20 Animal-Themed Projects to Sew & Quilt, p. 88.
Print Marked Items
Simple Patchwork Projects: 20 Animal-Themed Projects
to Sew & Quilt
Publishers Weekly.
265.16 (Apr. 16, 2018): p88.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Simple Patchwork Projects: 20 Animal-Themed Projects to Sew & Quilt
Hayley Smith. Taunton, $19.95 trade paper
(128p) ISBN 978-1-63186-917-4
Smith's 20 animal-themed designs offer cheerful projects for the home that are irrefutably cute and graphically sophisticated. Smith (Proggy
Menagerie) links her designs to the English paper-pieced patchwork she learned as a child. Instead of the basic hexagon, she creates animalshaped
pieces so geometric that sometimes they don't always immediately register as the shape of an animal. Smith uses a silhouette Scottie dog
motif for bolster pillow cover, while a herd of sheep come together to create a play mat for a child's nursery. There's a delightful cow teapot cover
and a practical angelfish brush roll to keep one's makeup brushes organized. Smith helpfully labels each project by skill level; there are a handful
of easy projects like the tote bag with a row of Labradors at the bottom, but most of the projects are intermediate. The written instructions are
clear and broken into steps that are augmented by Neil Reid's photographs at every step. The last section covers techniques--tools, fabrics, and
template tips--for cutting, basting, fastening, and embroidering. Smith calls out sewists' inner M.C. Escher to take patchwork skills to a new level.
(May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Simple Patchwork Projects: 20 Animal-Themed Projects to Sew & Quilt." Publishers Weekly, 16 Apr. 2018, p. 88. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536532773/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=392899e8. Accessed 19 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536532773