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One of my favorite things about embroi­dery is the low bar­ri­er to begin craft­ing. Thread and oth­er tools are rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive and learn­ing the most basic stitch­es takes lit­tle time at all. Once you’ve been intro­duced to the world of embroi­dery, it’s time to check out Thread Folk: A Mod­ern Mak­ers Book of Embroi­dery Projects and Artist Col­lab­o­ra­tions by Lib­by Moore. Lib­by, who goes by the online moniker of Thread Folk, has cre­at­ed a text that’s full of stitch instruc­tion and projects for you to make.

I had the chance to spend time with the Thread­folk book. Every­one has their own sto­ry of how they got into embroi­dery (for me, it was first stitch­ing on paper), and Lib­by shares hers. It start­ed as a way to make DIY gifts and has blos­somed into a great career that includes mak­ing her own pat­terns and col­lab­o­rat­ing with artists on theirs. “I want­ed to help be a cat­a­lyst for oth­ers’ cre­ative jour­neys,” she writes.

I appre­ci­ate that Lib­by starts with the absolute basics. She explains the nec­es­sary tools, a glos­sary of terms, and the 14 stitch­es you’ll need to know to com­plete the projects in the book. If you’ve nev­er stitched before, the Get­ting Start­ed sec­tion is real­ly helpful—and thor­ough, too—with expla­na­tions of how to trans­fer pat­terns and sep­a­rate strands of thread.

After intro­duc­ing you to the terms and tech­niques you’ll need to know, Lib­by shares 15 embroi­dery projects for you to com­plete. They are divid­ed up into chap­ters. The first chap­ter revolves around col­or­ful shapes, the sec­ond chap­ter is flo­rals, the third is col­lab­o­ra­tions (my favorite), and the final install­ment is hoop-less cre­ations that include how to stitch onto can­vas shoes. Each project has a pat­tern to trace and step-by-step instruc­tions to ensure that’ll you’ll be suc­cess­ful with every one of Lib­by’s projects!

Thread Folk: A Mod­ern Mak­ers Book of Embroi­dery Projects and Artist Col­lab­o­ra­tions is now avail­able on Ama­zon.