Beeton's Book of Needlework (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press)

Excellent book

This woman knew everything there was to know about needlework of all descriptions. Lots of examples and illustrations. Text is a little labor intensive to read because this book was written more than a hundred years ago. It is a very nice advanced resource for everything from knitting to embroidery to fancy work of kinds that I'm not familiar with at all. If you need to work from pictures, don't buy this book because I think it will be way too difficult for you. If you are a person who learns from reading, then go for it. I bought a copy for myself, and one for my sister in law and we slavered over the descriptions together. Note: the author was British and all measurements, hook and needle sizes, stitch descriptions, etc. are in British measurements. You can download sections of this book at the Antique Pattern Library on the Net if you want to check it out before purchase. It's difficult to read online though and that is why I ended up buying a copy. If you are a serious needleworker, this is the book for you.

This is for the Kindle edition!The book itself is a fine example of old patterns in many types of needlework; however, As Mr. Reeves pointed out, there are no pictures in the Kindle edition. I have a lot of old needlework books, magazines and pamphlets, and I can tell anyone who doesn't know, you DO want the pictures, skimpy though they may be.Sadly, I have no idea why Amazon chose to put this version in the Kindle library as this same edition, in Kindle format, with pictures is available on Gutenberg dot org, and, of course, is also free. So, don't even bother with this one. Just go directly to Gutenberg and download from there. By the way, Gutenberg also has the Encyclopedia of Needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont which I highly recommend. I've had that in hardback for years and refer to it regularly for basics of all kinds.Shame on Amazon for being so careless with these books just because they are old and free. That's no excuse for such sloppiness and lack of consideration of the readers.

I have purchased many Kindle books and magazines. Most of them I even got to read once. Then my kindle died. I had to get my son-in-law and my husband to download and install kindle for the PC in order to recover my books. My magazines which I had continued to be docked for out of my social security money are just gone. I never even got to read them once even though I had paid for them.Kindle for the PC would not install on some of our computers, for reasons unknown, so even that was a bust. In is NOT the next best thing!This particular book is worthless in the digital version! It needs to be portable enough to be held up next to my needlework canvas.

This book was originally written in 1870. This was the time when Point Lace came into vogue, and fancy needle work was in big demand. This book of patterns was aimed to satisfy the interest in reproduction of antique laces using different techniques such as tatting, embroidery, crochet, knitting, netting, berlin wool work, point lace, and Guipure D'art.The original book consisted not only of descriptions and instructions,but with illustrations by 600 engravings. Unfortunately the images are not part of this publications. Oh, how I wish they were!The most interesting section of the book for me was about tatting. I enjoy all different types of needlework, but was not familiar with "tatting". Tatting is different from crochet by being entirely composed of stitches forming knots. The knots are made with an instrument called a shuttle. This shuttle consists of two oval pieces, flat on one side and convex on the other side. The cotton is wound around the shuttle to form a knot. The book contains very detailed instructions on how to hold the tool, and how to make the stitches, but unfortunately without the images it was hard to follow. However, I became interested enough that I will search out other information on tatting.Index:CROCHET PATTERNS.KNITTING PATTERNS.NETTING PATTERNS.EMBROIDERY PATTERNS.POINT LACE PATTERNS.GUIPURE D'ART.BERLIN WORK.MONOGRAMS.INITIALS AND NAMES.PILLOW LACE, AND LACE STITCHES.The instructions for other techniques are just as detailed, but also lack images and patterns. If they were part of this book it would definitely rank a 5 star.Ali Julia review