Too often, books about hand crafts and other art forms are based around specific projects instead of techniques with ideas and suggestions for projects. I get so very tired of reading magazines and books that tell me how to make a very specific thing dreamed up by someone else, while looking for inspiration to create my own ideas.

This book, however, is simply amazing. The Art of Manipulating Fabric, by Colette Wolff, is well worth its cover price (though you can get a good discount on Amazon).

This is definitely a book about technique, not projects. Very clear, well-illustrated instructions for each type of fabric manipulation, and then stunning galleries of ways to push the technique to its limits. What impresses me most is the balance between absolute precision in the samples to the wilder creativity of the more advanced ones. Tucking to pleating and smocking, quilting, trapunto, gathering, ruffling, using cording for filled reliefs — I’ll be pulling ideas out of this one for years to come.

I have to be honest. I haven’t made, or even worked on, any of my original projects in more than two weeks. I’ve done some cross-stitching on a kit that I do in the evenings in front of the television, but that doesn’t count.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to work on — I have “The Road Ahead” to finish, now that it’s mounted on canvas, and a smocking sampler to start as I look towards making a flower-girl dress for my daughter for her uncle’s wedding in June, and March’s “Take it Further” project, and February’s, for that matter, and a Fast Friday Quilt from two weeks ago, and an installation stole, and ….

But I find myself in a frozen state, and I’m not sure why. I’m tired, and ill at the moment with the throat-bug that has been going around, but usually I find art-making more energizing than not. Perhaps it’s the getting-started part — my art-making space is less than ideal and requires clearing off before anything can really be done. Perhaps it’s the mid-winter, pre-spring doldrums. Perhaps those are just excuses.

What gets you going when you’ve stopped?

Clerical stole made from Guatemalan wool woven and silk jacquard, with machine applique and metallic thread quilting, muslin batting, completed December 2007.

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“Point Sampler” on Guatemalan wool, with pearl cottons, metallic floss, and silk ribbon - from the top left, chain stitch, pekinese stitch, fly stitch with colonial knots, long-tailed lazy daisies with a colonial knots, sheaf stitch, lazy daisy, whipped long-tailed lazy daisies with french knots, seed stitches, berry stitch and long-tailed french knots, chain stitch with more long-tailed french knots, moss stitch, wheat ear, variations on fly stitch with french knots in silk ribbon, and a whipped spider web. Approx 4″X6″.

This was made for week two of the Personal Library of Stitches Class, back in November-December 2007. Weeks one and three samplers can be found here.

The lesson was on the concept of “point” — stitches that can stand by themselves, or be grouped for certain effects. I used a piece of the wool that I purchased for an Advent stole (to be posted later this week), thinking that I would embroider it rather than doing all of the embellishment by machine. I ended up going a much simpler route for the stole, because the relatively loose weave of the fabric made it difficult to needle and keep the stitches uniform.

The picture is not as clear as I would like, due to the need for a flash on the dark color and the sheen of the threads. The Pekinese stitches, top right and laced with gold floss, especially do not stand out as much as they do in person.

Clerical Stole made of light wool suiting and cotton batik pieced applique, applique is satin-stitched with variegated thread.

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