Sew Me, Love Me: Best Stuffed Friends to Make

Kuei, Hsui-Lan. Sew Me, Love Me: Best Stuffed Friends to Make. Interweave Press, 2009. Paperback $19.95, ISBN-13 978-1-59668-182-8

What’s it about? Taiwanese costume designer and illustrator Hsui-Lan Kuei shares her love of hand-made stuffed animals out of discarded clothing in the adorable DIY crafting book Sew Me, Love Me.

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Crafts from recycled materials are eco-friendly, economical and in vogue.  Sew Me, Love Me features 12 patterns for stuffed animals (lions, frogs, beatnik bears) made from old socks, sweaters, pillows, buttons, and more. Creating these hand-sewn dolls is a fun hobby, and the dolls are great little gifts. Sew Me, Love Me contains simple patterns and doll-making basics that even novices can follow.   The specific patterns for each doll are available in the back of the book, and her instructions are clear and easy to follow. Each pattern is accompanied by full color photos of her creations in various poses, with funny asides.  Kuei does such a great job at illustrating stuffed doll-making techniques that the ideas and skills learned from this book can be adapted to make new patterns. 

 Although not specifically targeted to tweens and teens, the craft of doll-making is a hobby many share.  Moreover, this is an accessible skill.  While this is overall a very clear, fun, and engaging craft book, there are a few slight criticisms. The difficulty level in Kuei’s patterns is not too high, but it would have been nice if the patterns had been labeled somehow with indications of the difficulty. The first pattern (for Froggy Friends) and the last (for Mr. Wiggles) are the simplest, but someone new to dollmaking wouldn’t necessarily know to start out with these patterns. Also, Kuei introduces doll-making techniques in the beginning of the book, in the appendix and intersperses various techniques throughout. The subject index helps readers thumb to the techniques they need, but it may have been a better idea to keep the information on techniques together. The content is excellent, but the arrangement of the contents could be better.

Genre label: Non-fiction

Subjects: Crafts, sewing, doll-making, DIY

 Reading level/interest level: Grades 4 & up

Read-alikes:

Christine Haden’s Creepy Cute Crochet

John Murphy’s Stupid Sock Creatures