Smaller than an ATC and with wonderful wearable possibilities, fabric charms are worth exploring. The photo above is from this blog and if you look at this photoset from Ruth Rae you can see the charms in detail. Her work is due to be featured in the May/June issue of ClothPaperScissors.

You’ll find a tutorial here from Sue Bleiweiss and the results of an Australian swap here.

Participants in the Just Simply Charming swap show their work and some processes here.

The World of Flowers in Wool, written by Lily Simons, published by Sterling.

Before seeing this book I never would have thought of making flowers from wool as such an amazing art. I had of course seen simple shaped flowers like this at knitty before. But never the intricate life like wild flowers from around the world that are in this book. Learn to make Geraniums with closed and open buds, bright red with green leaves, get a life like stamen and petal. Or what about a Waratah, a gorgeous Australian native flower, or what about a fern or African Violet, water lily or forget-me-not.

The instructions include a picture of the final woolly flower and a few sketches of how to get there as well as instructions on how to make the separate parts and attach it all together. The instructions are perhaps a bit sketchy, I certainly could use a bit more detail. But once you have have the basics I imagine that doing all the variations would easier.

The design of the book is really simple and elegant. A double page spread for each flower with a section at the beginning explaining the techniques and basics, such as making leaves, learning the various knots and casting on methods as well as the tools which basically include a stick and some wool! (The stick is a whittled stick which has a notch in the end). There is also a brief section on flower terminology, a bit sketchy, I know its not a natural history book, however I would have appreciated a bit of information (history, location etc) about each flower on the flowers page.

I was pretty skeptical about the concept of this book at first, however after going through it numerous times, I have fallen in love with some of these flowers and an urge to get the wool out and make some woolly flowers is coming. I particularly love Australian wild flowers of course so the Waratah and the Gum tree are especially calling me. But I also really like some of the other unusual types like the blood-twig dogwood, cat-tail and salt cedar. You can probably tell that I love this book - its a bit of a surprise winner for me.