Sashiko by Susan Briscoe

 

This review is for people who love sewing and embroidery.

Sashiko is a beautiful form of the running or hem stitch. It is slightly different because there are certain sewing rules - you don't end a stitch and begin it at the same point. You will find a slight gap and this overall brings beauty in the picture that you are embroidering.

Sashiko is a Japanese art form and like any art form, there may have been exchange of ideas via the trade route. So sashiko was used to basically stitch up patches and tears with additional fabric. You could carry out sashiko even on quilts, making it sturdy. Sashiko designs are mostly geometric. They can be applied on to any fabric. Ideally, you would use thin white thread on indigo or blue fabric to bring about the stitches using a long needle to give uniform stitches across a line.

I am a big fan of buying craft books and have quite a few Crochet books back home. So when I started sashiko, I was quite put in my place by my craft teacher - my grandmother - because she said, kantha uses a similar technique but lot more work. The filling stitches on kantha are strenuous to the eyes and the artisans who work on it in villages get paid a pittance. I have always wanted to buy this book more like a collector's item than a reference book.

The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook does give you some history of the stitch and a list of different stitches that can be used. There are also projects that you can follow. Thankfully I found this book on Scribd and had the chance to see if I really needed to invest on it. I know where I will put my money on now

- A NetGalley Review