My Favorite Eco-Friendly Craft Books of 2024

2024 was a great year for craft books!

I love that eco-friendly crafting is now such a basic expectation that more books now encourage it by default than don’t. Sure, there are still plenty of resin and polymer clay and vinyl craft books around (and ugh, vinyl is currently my BIGGEST pet peeve!), but it’s now happily super easy to find craft books that focus on natural materials, sustainable methods, and opportunities for upcycling. Craft books that show you how to enhance your techniques or customize your patterns are also eco-friendly, as learning how to make something exactly the way you want it is the best way to stop waste before it starts.

Out of all the wonderful craft books of 2024, here are some of my favorites:

I love the idea of a yarn-maker publishing a craft book that uses their yarns, especially when the yarn-maker is focused on green, sustainable practices and US-based production. Knitting craft books work more or less well depending on how you, personally, like to see your instructions, so you might want to preview this book to see how well the chart sizes and written instructions work for you before you dive in. The book is also VERY knitting-heavy, so those who only crochet won’t find an equivalent number of projects. I love the yardage estimates, though, and although the fine gauge called for in many of the blankets is labor-intensive it means that the resulting blanket will be soooo warm and cozy!

One thing about the COVID pandemic is that I think it really gave us an appreciation for contemplative, soothing, “cozy” crafting. Who among us did not devote some time in 2020 to learning how to knit, or macrame, or try out some other previously-undiscovered handwork? I learned how to macrame plant hangers in 2020, and spent untold hours crafting the world’s longest paper chain for my Christmas tree, and discovered how satisfying it is to embroider on wool felt.

If you didn’t tackle embroidery during the last pandemic, it’s not too late to learn it now. And if you already love to embroidery, well, there are always more sweet embroidery patterns to stitch! Cozy Stitches supports both levels, and all the ones in between, with full-sized patterns and step-by-step instructions for the beginners, and a variety of projects at higher skill levels to tempt experienced stitchers. And for every project, the emphasis is on slow, peaceful, gentle work and creations.

In Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman, a master woodworker discusses his childhood influences, and the adult experiences that inspired him to create his artistic vision and legacy. While it’s not a how-to book, Robinson’s memoir is a genuinely inspirational ode to anti-consumerism, the value of handwork, and the importance of taking time to really observe the world around you. If you’re in search of your own artistic vision, or wondering how the works you create will contribute to your legacy, this is a must-read.

There is rarely a more frustrating experience than spending time and energy on sewing a garment for oneself, only to discover that it fits so poorly that you’ll never want to wear it. The Perfect Fit shows you how to stop that frustration before it begins, by teaching you how to use your own measurements to alter store-bought patterns, and even to draft your own patterns from scratch. The book is amateur-friendly, with plenty of visuals and step-by-step instructions, but it’s definitely not suitable for a beginning sewist, and even an intermediate sewist would struggle if they’re not pretty familiar with garment sewing. But if you already know your way around a clothing pattern, and especially if you already have in mind some ways that standard patterns don’t work well for your own measurements, this book is a great way to level up your skillset.

If you remember my love of mini quilts and all things rainbow, you won’t be surprised that this recently published craft book is nevertheless one of my favorites of 2024. Mini quilts are so great for using up the smallest scraps from your fabric stash, but the beautiful colorways in these tiny projects won’t tip off your recipient that their new favorite gift used to be your waste fabric.

If you want to sew something a little larger, there’s a cute table runner and a crossbody bag to make, but just between us, I’m still too busy squeeing over the pouches and pincushions to have tried out any of those projects yet.

Finishing a quilt can often be the trickiest part of the whole project. If you’re a quilter, you’ve likely found yourself at an unwilling stopping point at some time or other, when the joy of creating the beautiful quilt top suddenly turns into the technical process of backing, binding, and finishing it off. That’s why I consider this manual on ways to bind and finish a quilt to be part of the eco-friendly craft genre–quilts deserve to be finished, used, and loved, not stacked hidden and mostly finished in the back of a closet!

Stotts’ book is a walk-through of several methods for finishing and binding a quilt, from the basic to the decorative and whimsical. A moderately skilled sewist should be able to easily follow any of the tutorials, and will then be rewarded with a toolbox full of binding methods to utilize in future quilts.

What was YOUR favorite eco-friendly craft book of 2024? Tell us about it in the Comments!