Sew Witchy by Raechel Henderson – Book Review
Sew Witchy: Tools, Techniques & Projects for Sewing and Magic, by Raechel Henderson is a wonderful introduction to using sewing and embroidery in your magical practice. It is written with the complete beginner to both sewing and witchcraft in mind, and insightful enough to inspire experienced sewers, witches, and other magical practitioners, making it a perfect addition to the library of anyone interested in incorporating magic into their sewing practice.
The first part of the book takes you through the philosophies and basic magical underpinnings of turning your sewing endeavors into magical endeavors. Raechel Henderson is very thorough about touching on magical properties and approaches to everything from picking your fabric and thread, to preparing your work area, treating and consecrating your sewing tools as magical tools, and touching on correspondences and other magical practices (like runes and numerology) that can be incorporated into sewing magic. She is also conscientious of the fact that different practices can and probably will look different from her own, and gives suggestions for how to further explore magic in sewing.
Most of the book is various projects to get you started or provide inspiration, which Raechel Henderson scales in difficulty from 1 to 3. In all honesty, I consider every single project in this book to be beginner difficulty level, and approachable for even the newest sewer. With that in mind, though, the difficult levels are accurate relative to each other. Also, most of the projects can be easily adapted and made more complicated by sewers with more experience who are looking to make something more intricate or involved.
The projects cover a wonderful array of potential needs and purposes, both magical and mundane. There really is something in there that can be used as a starting point or inspiration for just about any sewing or magical purpose, and after reading this book I am itching to start sewing or embroidering again.
The couple criticisms I have are very minor, but deserve a mention. There are a few points where Raechel Henderson mentions gendering correspondences as though they are universal, which is irritating to me as a nonbinary individual who finds such correspondences inaccurate, distracting, and limiting. However, she does this far less often than is typically found in magical primers of this nature. If this sort of thing also bothers you, please just be aware it is in there.
I am also not a fan of the instructional diagrams, especially those describing hand sewing and embroidery. They are OK, but not as clear as I have seen in many a sewing or embroidery book, or that you can find in my own instructions on hand sewing. However, the focus of this book is magical practice, not how to sew. There are enough basic instructions that you can use it as a sewing primer, but it would be unreasonable to expect this book to excel in that area or cover all the technical aspects of sewing in detail. It provides enough of an overview of sewing skills to get you started, provide a foundational understanding of how sewing relates to magic, and allow you to jump into the projects specifically found in this book. The focus is rightfully on how to make your sewing a part of your magical practice.
If you are a complete beginner to sewing or embroidery, I highly recommend also buying a book or two which are focused on how to sew and/or how to do embroidery. Each topic is extensive in its own right, and warrants multiple books that cover different aspects in detail. If you are interested in embroidery, I highly recommend also buying a book that indexes various embroidery stitches. This will help you to apply the wonderfully laid out principles and ideas found in this book to your own unique projects for your own unique practice.
Whether you are interested in adding magic into your sewing practice, or adding a sewing practice into your magic, Sew Witchy by Raechel Henderson is a wonderful place to start.