Here we are with the traditional ruthless self-review, trying to get across the reasons why you should not buy the book. And maybe even a few why it is worth it…. I hope!

It is useless for you to come to the show and buy it unopened, because you know that you would then violate my personal and unquestionable code of ethics, causing me great pain and cries of despair. I will force you to leaf through it, and this time you will really have to do it, because the newborn is not a book like the others. I mean… The others were not books at all, and this one is a little bit. The others were albums of reasoned drawings, aimed at embroidering proposed subjects, following my directions and, if you like, my colours. The direction of this book, however, turns elsewhere.

I swear I didn’t want to. I wanted a lean, practical, straightforward little thing. Would you have liked it that way? The book is not for you, I’m sorry. Despite myself, the creature has become complex: in my defence, I can make the shy excuse that it is the subject that is complex.

Since Mother Nature in my birth kit forgot to add prudence and common sense, at the origin of the book is the design of a sampler, which should have proposed exercises of increasing difficulty, to review all the difficulties of the full stitch. Obviously, the sample book should have contained letters… And well… But, yes, come on! Let’s do the ENTIRE alphabet!

Bravo, yes, bravo!

I embroidered the alphabet.

Then a thin, subtle, naive, but also somewhat mischievous and provocative, and definitely irritating little voice whispered in my ear:

– What if someone wants to embroider their initial without following your sampler, which in short, also seems a bit challenging to me?

– Well, whatever… I’ll put the alphabets too!

11 alphabets.

11.

11, get it?

Some are just copied from tradition, many are redrawn and revisited or drawn from scratch. They are not exceptional, they are not ornate, they are not the reason why you should buy the book if you are looking for designs. Looking for beautiful designs for the full stitch? This is not a book to buy! You could go to the blog www.patternmakercharts.blogspot.com, which collects a very elegant series of beautiful embroidery alphabet designs! My alphabets are used to follow the proposed didactic path, which starts with a simple line and then climbs up the paths of thicknesses and then lines within the design, ball ends, overlaps, surface ornamentation and so on.

If it had come out the way I tell it, it would have been the slimmed-down little manual you would have wished for, even if not slimmed down. Instead, as soon as I had got to my PC to write down the stages of this journey from the easiest to the most difficult, a tremendous realisation had petrified me. It is said that for days I stared at the horizon without any quivering of the muscles giving signs of life: a wax statue incapable of reacting to any external or internal stimulus, except for the elaboration of what my awareness would entail when I woke up (it is also said that Alfredo took advantage of the moment to blow up a saucepan with firecrackers, but when I regained my senses, justice was done, I assure you).

It was only my shell that lay motionless in the room. The real me had ascended the crater of Sneffels, peering into its darkness, the folds of the white dress lashed by the rushing wind at the summit. I had accepted the idea of penetrating the bowels of the fibres of thread and cloth, for otherwise I would have told a banal story, known to all, yet incapable of bringing concrete results. So… what would be the point?

I began the descent.

Each movement brought with it variations, subtleties, postural tricks, goal setting, the ability to recognise mistakes and how to correct them. It was too much to be told in words. In the courses I used to stage a performance… Here, unfortunately, it was not possible.

70 drawn and coloured animations, to try to make people understand… To myself, to others, to everyone.

I don’t know if I succeeded. I know that the theory part came across as a bit heavy and that if you don’t feel like reading, better not to resort to this book to learn the padded stitch

I am overwhelmed by doubts about the complexity of this book and its usability, but I am sincerely proud to have found the way and the place to investigate two aspects that I have been emphasising for years in courses and that are close to my heart:

  • having defined the terms for the spasmodic search for light reflected by perfect embroideries
  • having formalised a thought on the importance of thread tension and the directions in which it should be pulled to govern it.

The book starts with an introduction with my premises and materials and then tries to achieve its goals through two large chapters:

  • The padded stitch in theory, with illustrations of the movements and explanations, covering different cases;
  • The padded stitch in practice, with cards that refer back to the theory to perform the exercises, from the easiest to the most difficult.

I am now petrified again. I scrutinise my creature from afar, lying in clone packs on the pallet, unable to leaf through it, for fear of being assailed by the same doubts that have crushed my insides in the depths of the journey.

But after all, now the journey that begins is its.

And all that remains is for me to seat quietly scanning the horizon, to catch a hopeful glimpse of the sails of a return message.

Technically, the book contains 120 pages + softcover and costs 27 euros. I haven’t managed to update the site yet, but I hope to do so after the fair!