Beading With Herringbone Stitch: A Beadwork How-To Book (Beadwork How-to-Book)

Rating:
Summary: I must agree.......
Review: this book is not worth purchasing for more than $2. The projects are boring and the gallery is small. I would also have liked to see some of the gallery pieces matched with a technique in a project.

Rating:
Summary: Too little...of everything!
Review: This is typical "white middle class woman" beading!
The history and research is glossed over with a few pages and a map. Shame on the folks at Beadwork for putting their name on this book! Ndebele, not the anglicized "herringbone" stitch!
The how too drawings are not clear. Take a page out of Carol Wilcox Wells, madam! If you are going to do instructional work, be clear to the audience. The sketches are decent, but you can not be sure where the thread goes when you start doing more advanced work in ndebele.
The most disappointing aspect of this book?
The projects are horrible and the gallery is full of lovely examples that would be much better practice and more rewarding!
The gallery is too large and segmented. Why not, again, take a page out of Carol Wilcox Wells' book and pepper gallery with projects, projects that are desirable!
The ndebele "kalaidascope" is merely a tube, and the "vessels" are just tulip shaped vases.
I would save your money on this one, find a nice example of of "how to" in Virginia Blakelock's "Those Bad Bad Beads" then pick up a copy of Jean Morris and Eleanor Preston-Whyte's "Speaking with Beads: Zulu Arts from Southern Africa."
The stitch itself is not complex at all, but this book makes tinkerbell items that are rather ugly by comparison to the potential that is there.
I was soundly disappointed when I got this book. I think Beadwork/Taunten press rushes to print these books because they have an instant market, but this book founders badly on the shores of craft book.
Buy the two books mentioned above, you will be much better served!

Rating:
Summary: Bright colors with little beads
Review: Vicki and her friend Stephney Hornblow visited and beaded with Ndebele masters. Another friend, Evelyn Cohen, shared her photographs for the book, making the first chapter a blast of color and design. Now inspired, you learn about supplies and herringbone techniques. These are followed by fairly complex, but well-explained, projects. The gallery at the book's end consists of 22 pages of projects made by obviously very advanced bead artists -- WOW! -- fodder for your bead brain to ponder.

Rating:
Summary: Bright colors with little beads
Review: Vicki and her friend Stephney Hornblow visited and beaded with Ndebele masters. Another friend, Evelyn Cohen, shared her photographs for the book, making the first chapter a blast of color and design. Now inspired, you learn about supplies and herringbone techniques. These are followed by fairly complex, but well-explained, projects. The gallery at the book's end consists of 22 pages of projects made by obviously very advanced bead artists -- WOW! -- fodder for your bead brain to ponder.

Rating:
Summary: Too little...of everything!
Review: Vicki Star is a pro at writing "how-to" books--the books are clear, easy to understand, and filled with the joy of beading. The first six were self-published (and co-authored with Jeanette Cook, her partner in "Beady Eyed Women") and contained excellent information, but once Star teamed up with Interweave Press, the books became the benchmark for visual information display.
"Beading With Herringbone Stitch" is excllent in its description of instructions and techniques. Star does something that other authors would do well to follow--she explains the "why" of her instructions. It helps adult learners (or slow learners, and I'm one of them) come to an understanding of technique much faster. Star is also honest. When you are supposed to wind up with "a twisty string of Vs" she says just that. What a relief!
There are two different starts and descriptions for flat, round, and tubular. You'll learn how to increase and decrease, both in the middle and at the edge. And you'll learn the difference results of each.
Illustrations are big and easy to understand. Added beads are shown in a totally different color than beads in place (this was a problem in the peyote book).
"Beading With Herringbone Stitch" follows the format of "Beading With Peyote Stitch" in organization. A Table of Contents and Index helps readers find what they need. There is a 26-page, full color Gallery, a section of five Projects, both easy and challenging, and lots of color photos.
The book starts with a history of the stitch, a vital and often ignored book section that helps the reader understand the cultural links to the stitch.
The Supplies section is carefully presented. The stitch is shown worked up with the same color beads in different sizes and shapes, to lend understanding to bead selection.
No book has enough room to put all the text on the same page with each illustration, but this one makes an effort. Flipping back does happen, but not often enough to be distracting.
If you are interested in Herringbone Stitch, are having difficulty with it, or want a reason to learn it, buy the book. It's a must-have for your beading library.