Asian-inspired lampshades embellished with flying fish. Canvas sneakers decorated with pink and white swirls. A pretty pillow adorned with a sleeping bunny, sweetly curled up. All it takes to create these appealing projects—or add charming embroidered touches in no time at all—are a few simple stitches, some easy techniques, and the nearly 30 projects in this book. Begin by learning several styles for outlining, filling, decorating, and applique. Find out about floss, fancy threads, fabrics, and needles.
Get the scoop on hoops, and the lowdown on transferring your very own designs onto every type of fabric. The fresh ideas, witty patterns, and clever color illustrations take stitchers from novice to accomplished in a blink of the eye!

It is an interesting, varied, not-your-run-of-the-mill activity book, with cute illustrations. A caveat is a large scatter of difficulty among activities, which created frustration when activities could not be figured out (it would've been better to mark activities with level of difficulty so children knew when they were approaching the most difficult ones), and some unusual and rather idiosyncratic answers that were difficult even for adults to come up with or explain. Overall, good fun.

Catch the Sewing Bug is especially designed for younger hands working with adult ones, and is written in such a way that adults with no sewing skills can easily work their way through it. The book provides simple, do-able, fun projects. Each project builds upon skills learned in an earlier one, and by the time the child finishes the book, she not only has a fair repertoire of basic sewing skills, but also a large boxful of useful, fun things that she has made. It is amazing how much even the youngest child, with a caring adult, a good machine, and this book, can do!