Historically, needlework tended to flourish in female and feminine spaces — namely, the home. To embroider is to embellish: to create a fantasy world, allowing you momentary freedom. It gave women a voice when they had none.

Today, it is enjoying a revival with Google reporting a 100 per cent increase in searches for embroidery kits since the lockdown last March. The younger generations increasingly see needlework as an act that can be political and employed as a symbol of empowerment.

To think in terms of stories is fundamentally human. We use memories in stories to make sense of what we’ve done, give meaning to our lives, to establish connections with other people. We “live to tell the tale”. 

Ever since the first textile was created, there have been stories woven into fabric. Whether it be literally or figuratively, textile design does not exist without a narrative. Eric Minding, author of Oaxaca Stories In Cloth states, “Cloth is a language through which a people can tell stories about themselves, their community, and their place in the universe.”

Sewing has been woven into the fabric of our lives. 

For thousands of years, embroidery has offered a skilful way to embellish fabrics with intricate, threaded designs. “A hand-embroidered piece tells a story with each stitch that is created. It is a labour of love of that particular embroiderer, a slow process that involves many hours of work, which is so valuable because of the craftsmanship,” says Ola Dajani, a Dubai textile and fabric artist.

We are a storytelling species. — Across time, needlework artists have used woven, quilted, or embroidered fabrics for several purposes: to convey status and communicate messages or lessons; to mark history; for utility and adornment; as talismans; and for storytelling and myth-making. Artist Ruth Miller develops her narrative pieces around her own life; her tapestries often attempting to work out answers to questions of both the earthly and spiritual realms.

The first known evidence of humankind’s desire to embroider – in the form of fossilised remains of heavily hand-stitched apparel – dates back to the Cro-Magnon era. Other early ­examples include shells stitched onto animal hides in Siberia; pictures rendered in chain stitches using silk threads in China; quilted clothing, tents and armour in Ancient Egypt, India, Persia and Greece; sashiko or ­functional ­embroidery to reinforce old clothes in Japan; floral whitework in Ireland; and surface embroidery using rayon in Brazil.

In 17th-century Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire), embroidery offered symbolic protection. More recently, in the 1970s and ’80s in Chile, women created bright embroideries called arpilleras, as an act of resistance against Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship. The arpilleras, which memorialised family members “disappeared” by the regime, were so threatening to the government that it became a crime to own one.

In the 1970s, feminist artists including Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and Faith Ringgold used embroidery, quilting, and other handcrafts to tell powerful and disruptive stories, exploring the construction of gender roles and challenging the hierarchy that valued painting and sculpture above the art and craft forms traditionally considered “women’s work”.

Currently, fabric work is enjoying a revival, as artists use it to explore imperial histories, feminist politics and queer aesthetics.

Whether you’re an artist or not, embroidery is an appealing practice: It’s portable, you don’t need a studio, there’s no painterly mess to clean up, and you only need a few basic materials — Google has reported a 100 per cent increase in searches for embroidery kits since the lockdown in March. 

While it could seem a historically servile occupation, today embroidery is increasingly seen as an act that can be politically powerful, being employed as a symbol of empowerment, with many ateliers hiring crafts people from impoverished or politically unstable regions, such as Palestine; or from areas with a rich history of the craft, such as Lesage and Montex in France where Chanel has all of it’s embroidery work created, or Hand & Lock in London. In fact, needlework has a long relationship to politics, power, and resistance. “Queen Elizabeth I often embroidered with other female rulers, much the way male leaders might play golf today,” says Barbara Paris Gifford, a curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York. “It was a favourite activity because it inspired concentration, conversation, and competition.”

It was used by the suffragettes as a medium of protest – stitching the signatures that were not allowed on the electoral roll, and creating the Suffragette Handkerchief.

As Anette Millington, who teaches embellishment at Parsons School of Design, says: “In a time when folks are living inside and counting the days until a new reality, embroidery is very much about record-keeping and journalling. It helps make sacred the mundane.”

Even when the design at hand has no straightforward message, the act of embroidery can feel transgressive in its silence and domesticity.

For Louise Gardiner, embroidery is about pushing boundaries and defying preconceptions. “It’s impossible to communicate to people how intense embroidery is,” she says. “It’s incredibly labour intensive. I’m not sitting around with a needle, listening to classical music and drinking sherry. It’s hardcore.” Hand embroidery is intensive and repetitive. You become absorbed in it. For Louise Gardiner, embroidery is about pushing boundaries and defying preconceptions. “It’s impossible to communicate to people how intense embroidery is,” she says. “It’s incredibly labour intensive. I’m not sitting around with a needle, listening to classical music and drinking sherry. It’s hardcore.” Hand embroidery is intensive and repetitive. You become absorbed in it.

Trying to keep up with Donald Trump‘s controversial twitter feed, artist and activist Diana Weymar initiated the tiny pricks project, where she created embroidered pieces bearing some of the ex US president’s most outrageous quotes.

To illustrate the ongoing tug of war between lives and livelihoods, Huei Yin Wong has taken some of the world’s top stock markets and embroidered their rapid declines onto the fabric of a face mask. In this time of COVID-19, the project, titled ‘lives or livelihoods’, essentially asks one question, what is more valuable, our health or our wealth? “How many lives are we willing to sacrifice for the economy? How many dreams will we ruin to control an infection? What, exactly, is the price of a human life?”

Using her own skin as a canvas, British artist Eliza Bennett created a “self-inflicted sculpture”, woven into the palm of her hand. She carefully stitches patterns and lines onto her skin using coloured thread; ‘a woman’s work is never done’ results as an incredibly worn-looking hand, overworked and fatigued. By using intricate embroidery techniques — traditionally used to symbolise femininity — and applying it to a context of its opposite, Bennett challenges the pre-conceived notion that “women’s work” is light and easy. Bennett aims to chronicle the effects of labor intensive work, while drawing attention to low paid jobs such as cleaning, caring, and catering, all of which are traditionally considered to be gender specific towards women.

Another, less widespread textile work and technique is quilting. Quilting is best known as a domestic art, but traditional quilts follow deeply coded patterns that communicate much more than comfort and artistry. A quilt’s surface can often be “read” through linguistic and graphic cues. In many cultures, quilts act as historical documents that preserve narratives about place and identity. The scholar Mara Witzling writes that quilts historically “enabled women to speak the truth about their lives” by joining many disparate fragments, which when read together make a specific and often subversive “utterance.”

In 19th century America, quilts made many different utterances: they could transmit a local history, recount one version of a family feud, or physically connect living women to their ancestors by combining inherited fabrics. Before women’s suffrage arrived, American women also made quilts to express their political sentiments. Many examples of political quilts, like those credited with securing the presidency for William McKinley, joined campaign ribbons with fabric and other text-based materials. These quilts gave a voice to women who could not yet legally submit their votes.

Rosie Lee Tomkins was an African-American improvisational quilt-making. Tomkins felt she was an instrument of God and saw her work as an expression of her faith and his designs. “If people like my work, that means the love of Jesus Christ is still shining through what I’m doing.”Sometimes the embroidery reflected her daily Bible reading, including the Gospels, or she would stitch the addresses of the places she had lived.

Lastly, a technique that isn’t as widespread in the Western world: carpeting. 

The Far East has a long history of tradition and is an area that has produced some of the most beautiful carpets in the world. Carpet weaving is an ancient tradition in the region, and some even speculate that carpet weaving might have begun there.The Far East has a long history of tradition and is an area that has produced some of the most beautiful carpets in the world. Carpet weaving is an ancient tradition in the region, and some even speculate that carpet weaving might have begun there.

Women of Central Asia have been weaving hand-made rugs of intricate design for thousands of years. But in 1979, the carpets began to change radically. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan displaced more than a million citizens and devastated the region. Its effects impacted everyday life so deeply that women in Afghanistan and those living as refugees in Pakistan and Iran began to incorporate icons of war into their carpets. Flowers, birds, and decorative knots were replaced by machine guns, grenades, helicopters, and tanks in what were otherwise traditional weavings.

Aniconism (the absence of material representations of both the natural and supernatural worlds in various cultures, particularly in the monotheistic Abrahamic religions.) was also decreed based on a hadith. In this context, the flowers and fauna incorporated into many traditional carpet patterns became riskier. Strangely, parachutes and bombs easily took their place. Their compositions reveal a dark humour and complex commentary on contemporary life.

Ukrainian artist and founder of OLK manufactory Okasana Levchenya designs traditional kilims (carpets), weaved using a unique traditional technique dating back to the 16th century, mixed in with a contemporary take — the common antique patterns turn into Pokémon characters and other famous fantastical figures. Hiding amid trees and flowers, Pikachu and master Yoda are hand-woven using the very technique the local craftsmen developed centuries ago.

From political slogans to pretty petals, hand-stitching is the ultimate in slow fashion

The craft is undergoing a revival, with young fashion designers, artists and consumers gravitating towards this analogue skill in a digital age. The slow-fashion nature of embroidery is appealing to a generation who are as aware of climate change as they are used to the instant gratification social media brings. — “They want pieces that were made with care and attention to detail and have a keen appreciation for high quality and craftsmanship.” Hardy Blechman, founder of streetwear label Maharishi.

“Hand embroidery has the power to give a second life to old clothes that would otherwise be seen as waste.” Such upcycling has made her “conscious about using and renewing tools I have, instead of buying new.”, agreed Nicole Chui, a freelance embroidery artist who has worked with Asos and Nike. Lastly, Melanie Bowles, co-founder of Stitch School, says the process provides “an antidote to modern life and isolation by inviting people to slow down, make conversation, create new narratives that are intergenerational and intercultural . . . everyone remarks on how therapeutic stitching is.” 

If telling stories is what makes us Human, maybe the time has come for today’s young embroiderers to tell a new political story, one stitch at a time. To take up the needle is to reclaim our histories of anonymous, poorly paid and unpaid female craft, garment labor and piece work. We create to connect beyond ourselves. And as Betsy Greers, founder of Craftivists (2003) so truly wrote, “We are the makers of our own future. We are the crafters of calmer minds. Our stitches are strength. And hope. And love. For strangers, for loved ones, and most importantly, for ourselves. Because without crafting our best selves, we are less use to others.”

By Coline Rialan - Fashion Design, Art & Fashion History and Philosophy of Aesthetics graduate. She is now working part time for the Trend Atelier team as well as for the Sulger-Buel Gallery in London.

IG: @14.10.94

Linkedin: Coline Rialan

Additional References

[1] IKEA social entrepreneurs — Co-creating change

[2] How feminist cross stitching became a tool of the resistance

[3] How traditional embroidery helps Palestinian women achieve independence

[4] Hmong Story Cloth

Support!

[1] SewAID:

Sewaid is a program which offers selected women in very poor countries the opportunity to not only learn to sew, but to also provide them with the machines, equipment and skills they need to start a small home business in dressmaking or alterations and repair.

[2] SewMUCHmore:

Sew Much Hope provides sewing machines to refugees in the US and others in need abroad to foster self-reliance and help end generational poverty. SMH helps to restore hope and balance to communities abroad devastated by war, genocide and poverty working closely with other organisations, governments and communities to develop creative solutions and programs that allow the poorest of the poor to earn extra income, start a micro-business, or simply mend clothing and improve living standards for their families.