Connecting Threads: A Social History in Stitch

Lynn Setterington’s Connecting Threads is a tactile social history, documenting overlooked places, unexamined narratives, and the lives of people on the margins, all through the art of embroidery. This collection of twelve textile projects, spanning from 1981 to 2024, features compelling evidence of how stitch can record history, giving voice to those often unheard.

At its core, Connecting Threads is both deeply personal and profoundly political. Setterington’s work ranges from tiny, colourful hand-embroidered fragments capturing everyday life in South London and Yorkshire to monumental, site-specific banners created with construction workers in northern England. Through each piece, she stitches together themes of identity, belonging, health and wellbeing, sustainability, community cohesion, and social inequality, offering a rich and layered sensory testament to contemporary life that explores embroidery as a universal language.

Setterington has worked with communities across the UK, India, Brazil, and the USA, using stitch to foster dialogue and preserve lived experiences. Each thread carries weight, binding people together through shared histories and collective memories, charting Setterington’s deep commitment to collaboration. She emphasising the rituals of ordinary life and the importance of passing on textile traditions and notes: ‘Embroidery today is celebrated, practised and appreciated by people from all different backgrounds and walks of life, and its value as a connecting thread and vital accessible global communication tool is finally being recognised.’

Connecting Threads also showcases how an artist-embroiderer thinks, creates, and collaborates, and invites readers behind the scenes. She details how projects take shape, the challenges of socially engaged practice, and the evolving role of embroidery in contemporary craft. The work is a reminder that embroidery is not merely decorative but can be a powerful tool for storytelling and activism.

As a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University since 1992, Setterington is helping to shape the future of textile arts, mentoring generations of artists while continuing to push the boundaries of her own work. Her textiles are held in major public collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Crafts Council, and the Whitworth Art Gallery.

This isn’t just a book about embroidery and technique, Connecting Threads is a reflection on how textiles can document our times and challenge social structures. It is a must-read for artists, historians, and anyone interested in the transformative power of craft as means for preserving the stories that shape us, and a powerful statement on the world we live in today.

-