One of the Royal Wedding Dress Embroiderers-Sophie Long

Mastering the Art of Embroidery: Tutorials, Techniques and Modern Applications

This is another one of those books I love to borrow from the library more than once.  This book was published in 2013 so is more modern in its approach to embroidery.  It was written by Sophie Long who is with the Royal School of Needlework and was part of the group who embroidered Kate Middleton's wedding dress for her marriage to Prince William.  What an honour that would be for an embroiderer!  I can't even imagine it.

Sophie has her own web site at and her gallery of work is really worth looking at.  In particular I loved the giraffe she has stitched, and her ribbon embroidered hearts are lovely. 
The link to her website which is truly worth a visit is http://www.sophielong.co.uk

Sophie's book covers a lot of ground; as promised in the title there are lots of tutorials and illustrated techniques.  There is also a dictionary of embroidery stitches.  All these are accompanied by beautiful photographs which are sure to be visually pleasing.  I loved the works by a variety of artists that are used to highlight the various techniques.

I should tell you that this book has been praised for what it attempted to do but also criticized for actually trying to cover too much ground a fault shared with many instructional type books, but that certainly did not detract in my humble opinion.

 I love this book. It is available from the Book Depository for around $30 with free shipping.