Feminist Icon Cross-Stitch: 30 Daring Designs to Celebrate Strong Women Hardcover – Illustrated, October 10, 2017

Love the text and patterns in this book.Inspired by “make it bake it” holiday tradition I ordered the book in order to make the designs using perler beads.I had to work with the patterns a little bit to make them work with the perler beads, but it was an easy adaptation.I used mini beads and made bookmarks (Gloria Steinem, RBG, Simone de Beauvoir, Sally Friedan, Abigail Adams) and I used the regular beads to make a Frida Kahlo tray. I distributed the bookmarks with a copy of the icon’s story page to my nephews, niece and sister. I let them choose. The little nephew (7 years old) chose Gloria Steinem. My sister chose Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I learned so much about feminist icons from this fairly fun activity and it helped me spread the knowledge in an accessible way to another generation. Win!

Since the images are of strong feminist women, I hesitate to use the word "adorable" in my description, but they are. There are short bios of each lady. My oldest daughter decorates her home with images of Frida Kahlo, so the pattern could be made into a fast and inexpensive birthday gift. My granddaughter loves Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So that could be made into a gift for her, although the colors for the Justice are, understandably, drab. Using a linen-type Aida cloth, the image would be smaller. Then the patterns could make wonderful pincushions to give to club members. By making a variety, it would be fun to see which friend chose which design. But my biggest and most ambitious idea would be to embroider the most meaningful images, join them with fabric sashing strips, and make a Graduation Quilt for my oldest granddaughter. I must get busy, only 6 years to go.

The makers of this book accomplished something really special — introducing young women to both a fantastic creative outlet and the stories of 30 incredible women. The designs showcase an elegant, minimalist take on each of these icons, while the writing tells their stories of triumph in the face of institutional and patriarchal adversity. Cover to cover, this book is a perfect gift for any cross-stiticher, but especially for young women just getting started who may not know about the remarkable accomplishments of these trail-blazing feminist icons.

Really excited to try some patterns from this book! On first review, one downside is that some of the patterns don't show the grid clearly, so the counting may be pretty tough as the squares blend together more than they should. This is especially the case on darker colors (like the Beyoncé pattern where there is a lot of brown and black). Also, I'm very disappointed in the pattern for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Doesn't look anything like her....the other patterns, however are pretty great. Also, I love that it has a bio of each woman featured.

If you are feminist and love Cross-Stitch this books is adorable. There are so many patterns and building a wall with these on the hoops is a very creative option. You do not have to be an experience stitcher. The patterns are small, simply and easy.

This book is so much fun! The patterns are great and easy to do - even for a cross-stitch novice like me! I can't wait to give these as christmas gifts to all my friends this year.

This book is amazing, not only are the patterns easy to read but you get a history lesson also. My 18 year old daughter has chronic illness's and is loving doing cross stitch and this book has been perfect for her.

I made one of these patterns as a graduation gift for a student who is moving on to study for her Master's degree in feminist studies. I think this is a great book and I am glad to have it in my cross stitch pattern collection.

Amazing!!

Fun gift for a feminist friend. She loved it. Simple instructions and lots of feminists to choose from.

I read about the book online and only the cover was included in the article. Frida is the highlight of this book. Some others look a bit odd or discolored. The color part is easily fixed. I like the concept, to give young people more knowledge about these strong women.

I just started cross stitching and I thought the patterns in this book looked like a fun way to start! I was really excited to get started on the Cleopatra design but I instantly ran into a couple of problems.First off, there is no information on the pattern about what hoop size to use. I've seen other books that say on the page "if using 14 pt aida use ___ inch hoop." None of that in this book though. There is a sentence in the beginning of the book that talks about how to calculate what hoop size you need depending on the aida you are using, but when I used that formula to calculate the hoop size I ended up with a hoop that was way too small. What i didn't realize is that the grid on the image is 11X11 insead of 10X10.Which brings me to number 2; Who makes a grid of 11X11? It throws everything off and I was way too far into the process before I realized that because of it my hoop was too small for the image and it was throwing off all of my counting because I assumed from one lime to the next would be 10.Third, there are no symbols in the colours in the pattern so if you have two colours that are very close (like 918 and 975 in the Cleopatra pattern) it is almost impossible to figure out which one goes where. I ended up just buying one of the colours because I literally could not see in the pattern where each was used.Overall the patterns are fun and I really enjoy the short bio of each woman before the pattern, but I do feel like the patterns lack a lot of important information and it is a very weird choice to use a grid that is not 10X10. I would not recommend this book to another person who is just starting cross stitching since there is so much left to guess at.

Interesting book.