Well, this is a first for my blog, I've reviewed a book! The kind folk at David and Charles sent me a copy of Stitch with Love to take a look at.

It's a lovely book by Mandy Shaw that shows you how to master a number of embroidery stitches, including chain, stem and lazy daisy stitches as well as the better known blanket and whipped running stitch. Following these pages there are loads of projects and makes to embellish with your new embroidery skills. It's been a while since I embroidered so it was lovely to use the book as a sort of refresher course.

Mandy also writes about different fabrics and threads to use for different projects, which I found helpful because I'm never sure how many embroidery cotton strands to use for different stitches.
The projects are divided into different areas such as those for use in the garden or kitchen, or follow themes like Christmas or buttons or hearts.

I thought I'd have a go at a project but me being me, I decided to mix up a couple of the book's projects and add my own little spin too! And this is what I produced:

Mandy shows how to make the apron from an old tea towel (I used a vintage French tea towel I picked up at an antiques fair ages ago) in the cookery themed chapter.

I then used templates of a sewing machine and pair of scissors from the sewing themed section for my embroidery.

I was pleased to find a piece of linen in my stash that matched the vintage tea towel perfectly and the button in the middle of the two pockets was a little addition suggested in the gardening chapter.

But that's a great thing about this book, the projects can be made exactly as described but everything can be swapped around and adapted and the embroidery designs can be used in any way you can think of.

If this has whetted your appetite to break out your embroidery floss then you might want to enter my giveaway! I have one copy of Stitch with Love by Mandy Shaw, worth £14.99, to be won. Just leave a comment on this post and I will pick a random winner after midnight GMT on Sunday 3 July. Good luck!