Celtic Cross Stitch: Over 40 Small, Exciting and Innovative Projects

Rating:
Summary: Designs are.... Yucky
Review: I was looking for some good samples of Celtic Cross Stitch designs. And all I can say is... I didn't find them here. I didn't care for the designs, and the book is really skimpy - they re-use a lot of the same designs with various simple adjustments to make up for the lack of variety. I would NOT recommend this book at all for anyone who wants to do a Celtic project.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat Disappointing
Review: I was somewhat disappointed by the projects contained in this book. The title says "Over 40 small, exciting, and innovating projects" and strictly speaking that's true. However there are not that many designs. For instance, the first 4 projects use the same salmon design in different arrangements - with a celtic border, on a cushion, as a sachet and as a card. This is ingenious and useful but if you don't care for this particular design, there go 4 projects out of the book that you don't want to do. I would have liked to have seen more different designs instead of these multi-uses of the same design (the grapes design later on is also shown as a card, a sachet, a placemat, and a napkin, another 4 projects). That said, I still found patterns that I liked a lot and feel that on the whole the book was worth purchasing.

Rating:
Summary: Contains 40 projects using many of same stitches
Review: This stitchery book is misnamed perhaps? Perhaps not. The title says that it has over 40 small, exciting and innovative projects. What it doesn't say is that many use variations of exactly the same design.

This book centers on the themes of water, fire, air, and earth. One water theme that repeated far too often for my liking with salmon - the identical salmon design was used on a scented pillow, a salmon cushion, a salmon tissue sachet, salmon card, and salmon gift tag.

Now that all having been said, there are a few stunning designs that made buying this book worth every penny. A particularly beautiful design in the water category is that of a "water jewel purse" - it's a beautiful little jewel tone purse designed in alternating stripes of Celtic knots in alternating colors. The design could easily be used, with a little imagination, to create a larger purse. There are also a few other fish designs, a sea serpent design, a knotwork bookmark, knot key rings, a dragon eyeglass case, a Celtic angel pincushion, an eagle bookmark, a triskele box (a sort of spiral design), a saint and birds, a durrow saint sachet, a durrow know clothes hanger, a bird headed triskele scissor keep, a grape vineyard design used on several projects, a design for a chessboard and fabric case for chessmen, a Celtic cross picture design, and most beautiful of all the designs - a Celtic swan needle case.

In the final analysis, this book was well worth buying for two reasons - 1. there were enough beautiful designs inside to make it worth it, and 2. with a little imagination and the instructions for a few types of projects, a crafter could create their own designs.