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...

Want to read more of this article?
We are proud to be a ​subscriber-funded publication with members in 185 countries. We know our readership is passionate about textiles, so we invite you to help us preserve and promote the stories, memories, and histories that fabric holds. Your support allows us to publish our magazine, and also ‘what's on’ information, and subscription interviews, reviews, and ​long-read articles in our online blog. 

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONTENT

OR...to continue reading….


*Magazine subscribers automatically get free access to all our online content. We send the access code by email with the publication of each issue. You will also find it on the envelope containing your magazine. Please note the access code changes every issue.*