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Book review: Freestyle Machine Embroidery

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freeYou’ve probably heard of Carol Shinn and seen her work around the Internet. You may even have been lucky enough to learn from Carol through one of her many workshops. If not, here’s your chance to be tutored by her.

Carol is an American fiber artist who is known for her realistic images produced with machine stitching.  Her book Freestyle Machine Embroidery: Techniques and Inspiration for Fiber Art shares amazing examples of her work and explains her techniques in detail. It is not a book for the casual crafter or dabbler, really. It’s more about producing fine art in an unusual medium.

If you paint but you’ve never before touched a sewing machine, and you’d like to experiment with painting with thread, this is the ideal book for you. Carol prepares you by explaining in simple terms the mechanics of the sewing machine so you can understand what’s happening between fabric and thread and you can manipulate that interaction. She steps through each critical element down to thread, needles, and hoops, pointing out pitfalls along the way. She even details how to set up your workspace and guide the fabric so that your body can tolerate long hours of stitching. There’s also plenty of information about canvas prep, color blending, and stitch variations.

But can a crafter with a limited background in studio art benefit from and enjoy this book? Well…yes. That’s just who I am, and I enjoyed it a lot. I’m probably never going to attempt photo-realistic fine art with my sewing machine. But there’s a very good chance, indeed, that some new machine-stitching experimentation will be going on my studio, thanks to this lovely book.

Freestyle Machine Embroidery was produced by Interweave and is available from Amazon.com and many other outlets. ISBN 978-1-59668-042-5

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Learn about China for Kids

China is such a big country with such a long history we can’t possibly cover it all in one blog post, but let’s get to the basics of the People’s Republic of China for kids.

China Basics

  • China is a country in East Asia and is the second-most populous nation in the world, with a population of more than 1.4 billion people. That’s 17.4 percent of the world’s population.
  • Its area is 3.7 million square miles, or almost 9.6 million square kilometers, which makes it the third largest nation by land area. It borders 14 countries: North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. It also borders Hong Kong and Macao, which are considered special administrative regions. Its land border is the longest of any country at 13,954 miles, or 22,457 km. It also has a 9,000 mile/14,500 km border on the Pacific Ocean. 
  • China has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic Era and is considered one of the cradles of civilization.
  • Gunpowder and paper, among many other things, were invented in China.
  • The country has been the People’s Republic of China since 1949 when Communists took control of the country. It is a one party socialist republic, where the leader of the Communist Party is the president.
  • Beijing is the capital but Shanghai is the largest city by population (and Chongqing is the largest by physical size).
  • The nation is 91 percent ethnically Han Chinese, and about 33 percent of the people are Buddhist.
  • Because it is so large it has many different climates, including deserts, subtropical forests, mountains, coastal and river environments, grasslands and plateaus.

Chinese National Symbols

The Chinese flag is red with a large gold star and four smaller gold stars in the upper left corner. The flag was adopted in 1949. Red represents the revolution, and the large star stands for the Chinese Communist Party. The smaller starts are for the unity of different classes of Chinese people.

The national anthem, “March of the Volunteers,” became the official national anthem in 1978. The lyrics were part of a poem written in 1934 about armies that opposed the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

There are many symbols of Chinese heritage including the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square and the terracotta warriors.

Chinese dragons and pandas are also considered symbols of the country, and the panda is the national animal. Plum blossoms and chrysanthemums are popular flowers. Unofficially, the red-crowned crane or Manchurian crane is the national bird.

Chinese Learning Activities for Kids

There are so many options for activities related to China, but here are a few things to get you started.

Pack More into Life has a great China unit study broken down into three days that includes crafts, food, music, folktales and more.

Mr. Donn has a great set of informative pages about ancient China, including an introduction to Confucius, Taoism, Buddhism, the major dynasties, oracle bones, cultural achievenemts and more.

Learn more about the Great Wall of China, the terracotta soldiers, and the giant panda. You can even throw a panda party with help from Red Ted Art. Or have kids build their own Great Wall of China with this activity from How Wee Learn.

Play Mahjong online or learn the basic rules of mahjong (not very basic!).

Learn about the lunar new year, make dragon crafts and snake crafts for the year of the snake (2025).

Check out more activities at Activity Village and Teachers Pay Teachers.

It’s hard to say what the national dish of China might be because it’s so large and diverse, but one you can make at home is Hot Pot. Check out the recipe from The Woks of Life. Listen to some traditional Chinese music while you eat!