Wabi-Sabi Sewing by Karen Lewis

Wabi-Sabi Sewing

by Karen Lewis

Capture the essence of Japanese style in your sewing with this collection of projects inspired by the wabi-sabi concept of 'perfect imperfection'.
This collection of 20 sewing projects for home décor and accessories is based on the popular Japanese aesthetic philosophy of wabi-sabi, which celebrates the beauty in the ordinary and imperfect.
Designer Karen Lewis, has used a limited palette of earthy tones and the best quality natural fabrics including linen, cotton, denim and wool to create a stunning collection of simple, sewn projects.
Try out some simple wabi-sabi style sewing techniques such as hand piecing, sashiko embroidery, big stitch quilting, and visible mending to create unique items for your home whether it's a full-sized bed quilt, simple coasters for your favourite mug or a stunning scarf to wrap up in.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

5 of 5 stars

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Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Wabi-Sabi Sewing is a new sewing/crafting book from Karen Lewis. Due out 31st July 2018 from F+W Media, it's 128 pages and available in ebook and softbound formats. The concept of wabi-sabi is deeply satisfying to me. It's about making do, creating something from less-than-exactly-perfect materials and celebrating the innate imperfection in everything.

The book follows a logical format. The first chapters introduce concepts, techniques, materials and tools. The next chapters are split into general groups: Living, Eating, Exploring, and Sleeping. Each of the broad categories includes five related projects. The 'Living' chapters include a lovely paper pieced pillow, a Hawaiian quilted wall hanging, a quilted pouffe, a set of fabric coasters, and a pieced lap quilt.

All of the projects in this book are suitable for keen beginners to more advanced sewists and all are appealing, in my opinion. As I was reading the book, all of them were projects I could imagine myself making at some point. The instructions are very clear and well written. The piecing instructions are also clear and easy to follow.

The supplies listed at the beginning of each project are complete and include everything (even thread is listed).

All in all a very useful sewing book filled with appealing projects.

The illustrations for each project are line drawn and easy to understand. There are color photographs of the finished projects throughout the book, including at least one clear color photo of each project inside the project chapter (so no flipping back and forth trying to figure out what goes where).

All in all a really appealing, well written book.

Five stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
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  • 15 July, 2018: Reviewed