I tend to put a lot of sewing books on my Amazon wish list. Some I get excited about and immediately put in my cart and others I wait until I get a feel for the projects or content that’s in the book. Stitch Savvy: 25 Skill-Building Projects to Take Your Sewing Technique to the Next Level is one of the latter, but I really wish I would have gotten it right away… I just love it! As soon as I started looking at her book tour, I knew this was the title for me – inside are over 25 different project ranging in abilities (beginner to advanced) and ‘styles’ (clothing, bags, quilts, home decor, and children). What got me most excited (and cinched in the purchase for me) was the cute Knit Top, Wherever Jacket, and Beaded Evening Clutch. My book arrived over the weekend and I’ve been pouring over it since! I even started my own version of the knit top (more on that in Friday’s post). What I like most (aside from the projects) is that this book builds on skills – there are ‘warm up projects’ that graduate you to the next level (say a pillow, to window treatment, to a patchwork quilt to a whole cloth quilt).

While I love this title and can see me making several projects from it, I do have a couple of ‘complaints’. Like many first run book, Stitch Savvy does have a few flaws. First off, the sizing information for the clothing is missing. I contacted the author about it – there was supposed to be a section in the back of the book, but it was somehow omitted (she said she is putting up an errata page for the book soon, but for now a ‘M’ runs a RTW size 8). The second thing I noticed was that the notches, registration marks, etc. were omitted from the knit top – I don’t know if this is true from the rest of the projects in the book, but my guess they may be. My final complaint… everything is on CD which means lots of printing and taping pieces together.