Review: Bend the Rules with Fabric

I’ve been having fun reading Amy Karol’s new book, Bend the Rules with Fabric, and dreaming up ways to, well, bend the rules with… you get the picture.

Amy has created a very thorough and user-friendly textbook for altering fabrics so they express your unique personality. There are lots of interesting techniques here.

Pushkin found it very interesting, too.

The first part of the book covers all the techniques, and gives a nice crash course in basic design principles and color theory. You can learn to paint freehand on fabric, stamp it, stencil it, print from your computer onto it, make iron-on transfers, dye it, and do decorative stitching. Wow. That equips you for an enormous array of creative applications.

As you can see here, the technique instructions are mostly text, but are expressed clearly and with Amy’s personable, encouraging voice.

The project range is fun, and includes some no-sew things for beginners along with more complex ones. I’ve loved these Aunt Sarah and Uncle Pete dolls ever since I first saw them on Amy’s blog a while back.

Here’s a great beginner project – taking a readymade garment and overdyeing it to give it new life. Fun!

This is a favorite of mine – adding a cool filigree to a skirt with a bleach pen. What a pretty idea.

…And here’s one of the stitching techniques – couching some bulky fiber over the surface of another fabric.

This book is another example of a direction I’m really happy to see emerging in craft books – a book that’s more about giving you building-block techniques than a series of projects to copy.

Bend the Rules with Fabric is a book you’d keep on your shelf year after year, because it would keep inspiring you in new ways as your creativity evolves.

Hi, FTC! Just so you know, Amy was kind enough to send me a copy of this book.