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Book Review: Stitch Love by Mollie Johanson

March 9, 2015

Book Cover

I bought Stitch Love because I’m friends with the author, Mollie Johanson of Wild Olive. I love Stitch Love because it’s a valuable and charming book that I’ll use for years to come.

Mollie designs all sorts of crafts: embroidery patterns, printables, quilts, sewing projects, softies, and more. Her signature design element is a little smiling face that anthropomorphizes almost everything she draws from coffee cups to volcanoes. Mollie’s style is sweet and friendly and welcoming and her first book, Stitch Love, is no different.

Pleasant Pet Shop Quiet Book

The book opens with 25 simple sewing projects with an animal theme. Some of my favorites include a quiet book, a plush guinea pig, a set of wild animal finger puppets, and a butterfly pencil topper.

FlutteryButterflyPencilTopper

The projects are small in scale and many can be entirely hand-sewn. They all involve some embroidery. The templates for most of the sewing projects need to be enlarged by 130%-200%, but you can print them out at full-size from the publisher’s website which more than makes up for it.

pages in black and white

After the sewing projects we get what I think is the real boon here – over 100 embroidery motifs for every animal you can imagine. These are divided by categories including “arctic and outback,” “pets,” “mountain and prairie,” “holiday,” and “dinos and fantasy,” among others. Every single design is delightful.

I asked each of my kids to choose a motif for me to embroider on an item of their clothing. Roxanne is 10-years-old and asked me to stitch a fox onto her jean jacket. Stella’s is 8 and her family nickname is “pelican” so she asked me to embroider a pelican on her jeans. And at 4 Josephine is smitten with dinosaurs. She chose a Pteranodon flying over a volcano. I picked the butterfly and made myself a bookmark.

Fabri Solvy Printed

To begin I photocopied selected pages of motifs onto Sulky Fabri Solvy. If you’ve never used this product it’s pretty amazing. You run it through your printer, then cut around the motif, peel the backing and stick it to your project. Embroider right through it. When you’re finished, soak the project in water for a minute or so and the Fabri Solvy dissolves.

Butterfly in progressButterfly Bookmark

Each motif took maybe half an hour to complete. Unlike many embroidery books Mollie doesn’t give you the exact DMC floss color to use. I like the permission to choose different colors and not feel like I’m doing it wrong. The stitches used are very simple – I just used backstitch and French knots – but the designs are so well-drawn and charming that they alone are worth every penny of the $16.95 cover price.

jean jacket

“For the stitches, I wanted to keep things as simple as possible,” Mollie told me. “The idea being that even someone who has never stitched before can embroider just about any of the motifs by learning only three stitches (backstitch, chain stitch, and scallop stitch).

Josephine in t-shirt

You could embroider these animals on all sorts of things:

  • cloth napkins
  • handkerchiefs
  • greeting cards
  • gift tags
  • quilt labels
  • t-shirts
  • jeans pockets
  • tote bags

Once you have a sheet of them printed out on Fabri Solvy they’re a great grab-and-go hand sewing project.

pelican pocketDSC_0068I tried to get them to model. Really I did.

pushMostly I just got this.

Unlike these shots of my kooky children, the beauty shots in the book are nicely done and Lark hired children (who stay still) to model (hooray!). It makes me so happy to see a publisher pay for models for a book that’s mostly focused on toys and small craft projects.

There are a few spots where I wish we could see more. The Hungry Critter Placemats look so cute, for example, but we never get to see the entire project, just close up detail shots. I hunger for views of the backs and inside of everything, but I understand that page limits control how many we get.

If you’d like to give a few motifs a try, there are some freebies from the book available online including a wombat and a lettuce leaf.

Get Stitch Love by Mollie Johanson on Amazon now or find it in your local bookstore.

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Comments

  1. Angie says

    March 9, 2015 at 3:51 pm

    I have just made the chick in the egg! I had such a laugh over it! I love it and can’t wait for tomorrow to make it again for my friends. I am so glad I found you. Can’t wait to try another of your patterns. Thank you. Regards, Angie.

    • Abby says

      March 11, 2015 at 9:45 am

      So glad to hear it, Angie!

  2. Kelly Caiazzo says

    March 10, 2015 at 1:25 pm

    Those turned out beautifully! I’m intrigued because if they take that little time to complete, they’d be such a great way to make a few of the boys’ outfits more special. The dinosaur would be a huge hit in our house! Great review – and those photos are perfect 🙂 thanks!

    • Abby says

      March 11, 2015 at 9:42 am

      Totally. There’s a project in the book that shows a dinosaur popping out of a pocket on a boy’s shirt. It’s so cute.

  3. Hilary says

    March 10, 2015 at 7:52 pm

    I like the fact that the patterns can be downloaded and printed without the hassle of trying to get the resizing correct. I recently purchased two of your books, Abby and the ‘Stuffed Animals’ book has just that facility, which is great. Is it possible to download the full size patterns of your ‘the artful bird’? It would make it so much easier for me. I tried to email you but it was returned.

    • Abby says

      March 11, 2015 at 9:41 am

      I’m sorry my email was returned. It’s abbyglassenberg (at) comcast (dot) net. You can try again if you’d like!

      Unfortunately the templates for The Artful Bird are not available anywhere at full size. I lost that battle with the publisher. But I’m so glad that Lark has put them up for Stuffed Animals. Thank you so much!

Welcome! I'm Abby Glassenberg and I'm glad you're here. While She Naps is a blog about designing and sewing stuffed animals and running a creative business.
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