I haven’t done a “most popular needlework books” post in a good nine months or more, so it occurred to me that it might be interesting to see what books off my website were considered most popular among readers. Here’s what I found out…
It’s always interesting to look at the reports to see what’s “hot” on the needlework book list. When I perused them this weekend out of curiosity, it was kind of fun to see what was popular.
Keep in mind that any books I recommend (or sell through Amazon) on Needle ‘n Thread, I own myself, and I like each one for one reason or another – there is, to me, some definite value for embroiderers in the book, or I wouldn’t recommend it.
Here they are, then – the top ten most popular selling needlework books on Needle ‘n Thread so far in 2009, from 10 being the least popular to 1 being the most popular, out of 74 needlework titles that were looked at by readers:
10. Redoute’s Finest Flowers in Embroidery
9. 4000 Flower & Plant Motifs: A Sourcebook
8. Beginner’s Guide to Silk Shading
7. Embroidered Monograms & More, Book 2 (Leisure Arts #4366)
6. Long and Short Stitch Embroidery: A Collection of Flowers (Milner Craft Series)
5. Mary Thomas’s Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches
4. White Work: Techniques and 188 Designs (Dover Needlework Series)
2. The Embroidery Stitch Bible
1. Beginner’s Guide to Crewel Embroidery
Those are all really good titles! I ordered some books myself the other day – after a long hiatus from book ordering, and I’m looking forward to reviewing them carefully. One is the book ‘Twixt Art and Nature 
And a couple others on the list are stumpwork-related and design-related. If they are as good as I hope they are, I’ll tell you about them!
A few years ago, I got a book called Doodle Stitching. It was a very nice beginners book, but I was beyond most of it.
The one nice thing that I did get out of the book, was the ability to work outside of a pattern. I learned to be less dependent upon patterns for everything, and have started moving into making my own out of simple drawings. It’s freed me to do what I always wanted to do, which was more sketchy cutesy stuff, which was very nice.
It’s a great beginner’s book for a gift though 🙂
Dying to see which Stumpwork books you get!
Redoute & William Morris & not much time to start any of those projects *sigh*