Universal Stitches for Weaving, Embroidery, and Other Fiber Arts is a text for beginning or advanced fiber artists that teaches how five basic stitches, plus 195 of their variations and combinations, work upon warp and fabric in functional and decorative ways. Part One identifies these five universal stitches and provides detailed diagrams and learning projects for mastering each. Part Two presents inspirational weaving, embroidery, and needlelace pieces for adventurous fiber artists who dare to mix techniques, and presents ideas for combined stitch techniques, driven by ancient fabrics from Egypt, China, and Peru. Part Three focuses on how the five universal stitches can be applied to master interlacing, wrapping, looping, chaining, and knotting stitches with ease. Master fiber artist Nancy Arthur Hoskins introduces an integrated method of learning stitches with a unique, visual diagramming system that greatly simplifies the process of learning all 200 stitches, for use in loom weaving, tapestry, and openwork, or as edges, joins, and fringes. Supported by clear and concise diagrams and nearly 100 full-color designs and samples, Universal Stitches is ideal for the fabric student and master alike.

Vibrant tapestries of beribboned birds, cantering centaurs, and Dionysian dancers, woven in Coptic Egypt more than a thousand years ago, were artfully arranged in a handsome pair of albums in 1913. Some of the fabrics are shown in unique collage compositions. Sandals, spindles, and a mysterious lock of hair are assembled in a shallow box at the back of one album. Many textiles in this important collection, housed at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, were once joined by warp and weft with those from the Mus e du Louvre and other major museums. Nancy Hoskins deftly interweaves the creation of the textiles in the Greco-Roman city of Antino, Egypt, with their discovery by the charismatic French archaeologist Albert Gayet (1856-1916). Gayet staged stunning exhibitions of the pieces in Paris at the turn of the century and ultimately gave them to museums or sold them. One collector, Henry Bryon, had his 144 fabrics bound into the two albums featured here. The album pages and covers are illustrated in glowing color, along with archival photographs from Gayet's expeditions. The style, structure, and iconography of each tapestry, tabby, and tablet-woven textile are discussed within the cultural construct of Late Antique and Early Christian Egypt. Detailed technical drawings illustrate the special weaving techniques of the Copts. Directions for six weaving projects inspired by the album fragments are included. The story of the inimitable Coptic tapestry albums will delight weavers, textile historians, art historians, and archaeologists. Nancy Arthur Hoskins, a former college weaving instructor, researched Coptic collections in over fifty museums around the world. She is the author of Universal Stitches for Weaving, Embroidery, and Other Fiber Arts and Weft-Faced Pattern Weaves: Tabby to Taquet . OMaster weaver, scholarly detective, and sensitive connoisseur, Nancy Hoskins combines all these skills to describe and identify this unusually wide range of Egyptian Coptic textile fragments. Her descriptions of weaving techniques create a fundamental glossary of technical terms, which all who study textiles should use. The detailed data on each piece are a benchmark for all who work in the field.O N Jere L. Bacharach, Director, American Research Center in Egypt"