How-To Books To Help You Learn a New Skill

The Quilting Book contains everything you need to know to create your own stunning quilt designs. This essential guide includes more than 200 step-by-step techniques, from measuring and cutting to quilting and binding, along with different styles, including improv and foundation paper piecing.

Your Gardening Year is the book every gardener should have as they embark on a new year of planting, sowing, pruning, and growing. This easy-to-use guide is packed with essential tasks and top tips for every month of the year, with sections on general garden care, growing fruit and veg, and getting the best out of containers.

There’s a time in life when you wake up and realize you’re on your own: If you don’t feed yourself, it’s buttered noodles for the rest of your days. Learn how to fend for yourself in the kitchen with 100 easy, cheap, and fun recipes from Spoon University. The goal isn’t to be perfect, but to finally cook like a real adult. No special equipment, skills, ingredients, or magic required.

Learn to knit with simple, easy-to-follow guides and over 20 cute and cozy project patterns! Master the basics of knitting and improve your technique with clear, comprehensive instructions. Once you’ve mastered the basics, move on to fun and functional practice projects to hone your skills.

From the artist behind the popular Pigeon Letters website, a complete guide to learning and perfecting brush lettering, a forgiving style of modern calligraphy that encourages creative expression and imprecision, including basic skills, flourishes, and project ideas.

This revised 15th anniversary edition of the bestselling beginning drawing book updates art and text examples to include new student pieces, up-to-date materials, and additional sections on drawing in 3D and travel sketching, along with a refreshed and contemporary design.

Go beyond reading manga and become a creator yourself! Whether you’re a beginner just venturing into drawing or an experienced artist looking for practice, Learn to Draw Manga is your friendly guide to the exhilarating world of manga art.

Create over 100 vibrant watercolor mixes and paint a range of inspiring botanicals including flowers, leaves, seedheads, and bulbs with award-winning artist and color-mixing guru Julie Collins.

Create neat and pretty watercolor projects with only 3 colors at a time! With this book you’ll be able to paint animals, flowers, plants, baked goods, and more in swift and quick strokes, using minimal yet distinctive color palettes. This is the perfect book for beginners as well as more developed artists who want to play around with more limited color designs.

Whether you are just starting out with watercolor painting or want to expand your skills and raise your art to the next level, this book has all the inspiration and practical know-how you’ll need.

Learn how to craft a blossoming garden of vibrant crepe paper flowers with 30+ detailed tutorials from master artist Quynh Nguyen. Journey through every stage of the artistic process — from choosing materials to mastering the intricate techniques that breathe life into your arrangements. With Nguyen’s detailed guidance and striking photography, let your creativity flourish as you bring more handmade beauty into your life and home.

Want to get into woodworking but don’t know where to start? Then this is the book for you. Designer-maker-teacher Chris Tribe walks you through the processes step-by-step, answering all your questions along the way. You will find out all about setting up a workshop, mastering the essential woodworking techniques and making and finishing some specially designed projects to put your new skills into practice.

Take a colorful journey through the seasons with this essential guide to sustainable, botanical dyeing from noted expert Aurélia Wolff. The gentle treatment of leaves, roots, bark, and flowers can result in exquisite hues on natural fabrics, so with Aurélia’s clear, expert guidance, discover how to forage ethically, dye naturally, and create your own unique natural palette.

Are you surrounded by weeds? Is your lawn forlorn? Are your bushes diseased? Do you long to create an outdoor space you can enjoy with friends — a garden you can proudly show off? Beginner Gardening Step by Step shows you the basics needed to get your green space under control and keep it that way. This book is packed full of creative ideas with lots of simple step-by-step instructions and clear images to help you realize your garden’s potential, no matter the size and scale. Take the anxiety out of planting, potting, and pruning, and make the most of your precious patch of land.

Discover everything you need to transform your empty plot into a stunning garden oasis with this gardening encyclopedia. Whether you have a small urban garden or sprawling acres of land, this gardening guide will help you every step of the way to create your garden masterpiece!

Each area of a garden offers a different environment for plants, with differing levels of sun, soil, moisture, and more. Following the principles of “right crop, right place,” everyone can grow fruits and vegetables that will thrive in their space, large or small. Including varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs, edible flowers, and container crops, there is something here for everyone — from favorites like chilis and figs to honeyberry, wasabi, agretti, and amaranth.