Book Review: A Modern Guide to Textured Crochet by Lee Sartori

A Modern Guide to Textured Crochet: A Collection of Wonderfully Tactile Stitches
Lee Sartori

Random House / Interweave, 2021.
128 pages
From the publisher:

A colorful and contemporary collection of stitches, crochet techniques, and projects for creating rich and appealing texture in your work

Crocheters looking for more texture, depth, and contemporary design will delight in this colorful new guide. Aimed at the experienced beginner to intermediate level crocheters with some extra ideas aimed at more advanced makers, the book covers a variety of textured crochet techniques–from the straightforward to the more complex and unusual –along with beautiful projects designed to showcase them.

Get ready to explore the beautiful textures that can be achieved with crochet–Bobbles, Popcorns, Clusters, Puffs and more. Each chapter guides you through a new stitch or stitch progression with photos, detailed instructions and diagrams to ensure you can follow along easily. In addition to simple, on-trend projects perfect for gifting or use in your home or wardrobe, you’ll find useful tips for saving time and troubleshooting, and additional ideas to explore.

 

Our thoughts:

Such an inspirational book! The author provides lots of ideas that can be mastered with a few key techniques and a limited number of yarn colors, although if you have no background at all in crochet, you’ll probably want to learn the basics of chaining and foundation stitches elsewhere. The photos are beautiful and the layout is very pretty. The focus is less on following steps to a project (there are only five projects total) than it is learning stitches that you can use in your own creativity. One reviewer on Amazon went to the trouble of making a list of all the stitches:

  • Bobble
  • Popcorn
  • Cluster (using single, double and treble crochet)
  • Puff
  • Shell
  • Picot
  • Tulip
  • Embossed
  • Lilac
  • Branches and vines
  • Butterfly
  • Cable (one for each season)
  • Crab
  • Ice cream cone
  • Lemon peel
  • Strawberry
  • Shell
  • Rose
  • Diamond waffle
  • Modified puff
  • Acorn
  • Berry
  • Jasmine
  • Basketweave
  • Loose leaves
  • Houndstooth
  • Coffee cup
  • 2×2 rib
  • Spike puff
  • Waffle
  • Feather
  • Embossed holly
  • Snowflake

This book will definitely go on my gift idea list for the crochet enthusiasts in my life.

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