Monday 6 January 2014

Japanese Craft Books

I have been having a lovely time over New Year, tucked up on the sofa under the new crocheted blanket next to Pooch, looking through a selection of Japanese Craft books. Not only do I have access to the usual bookshops (photos in this post) but also the Book-Off chain who do second hand books. And not only am I able to buy books and magazines BUT I have a library five minutes away which has a monthly quilting magazine you can read there AND a big craft section upstairs. I really am pretty lucky.
Craft Books
Those of you not familiar with japanese craft books, their usefulness lies in their extensive use of diagrams, charts and symbols. This makes them highly accessible to non-japanese speakers. There are a number of websites helping you understand them too. There is a brilliant collection of resources here and I have bought new books from Pomadour on Etsy before.

A few favourites from recent reads:
Round box pic
Fruit purses by akemi shibata pic
Hexagon patchwork bags pic
and this is the kind of instructions you get for the hexagon bag.
Hexagon patchwork bags instruct1
There are also usually templates either within the pages or on a fold out pattern sheet like you get with mainstream sewing magazines.

I know these books can be pretty expensive in the UK (actually they are expensive here too!) so I'm looking into setting up a little Etsy shop selling on the second hand books I can find that are at least half the price of the new ones and which are in good condition. If you'd like new copies I'd recommend Pomadour's shop, but otherwise watch this space for updates!

3 comments:

Rin@SewinLove said...

Thank you for the link to decoding Japanese knitting symbols!

That's a great idea to sell secondhand Japanese craft books; can't wait to see the Etsy store!

I made an e-book called "How to Sew Japanese Sewing Patterns" recently which is mainly for sewing garments :-)

AmandaK@whatthebobbin said...

Excited to see what books you'll be offering :)

Becky said...

Fabulous idea - get on the case and I'll certainly buy some from you x