The first event in the Mary Linwood project took place at The Big Textile Show in Leicester last weekend.
Remembering Mary Linwood
and generations of unknown stitchers
A community textile project in celebration of Mary Linwood,
Leicester’s forgotten 18th century embroidery celebrity!
– In these workshops we are using wool threads to make cords to
construct into a giant skein of thread.
– Each thread symbolises women who embroidered but whose names
are not recorded or remembered.
– Through collaborating, we bring those women back together into a
connected community of thread.
At the weekend I launched Connected Threads, one of the community activities for my Mary Linwood project. In Connected Threads we are making cords from wool embroidery threads, with each thread symbolising one of the many women stitchers of history who are not remembered or recorded. By collaborating together, we are connecting the threads of women making textiles for hundreds of years.
We went along to @bigtextileshow (thank you for having us!) and got the giant skein started. Alison Carpenter-Hughes is helping me with these events and learned the cording process super fast, and we recruited 25 or so women to contribute to our project, including @jcmiddlebrook seen here (and who provided the photos below).
The skein is just starting, but already looking joyously colourful. The participants really appreciated how fun it was to make these colourful cords, the message behind the project and being part of a piece to go in the exhibition.
There will be Connected Threads sessions for Leicester community groups in the new year, as well as sessions for anyone to drop in and take part in different locations in Leicestershire from January – June 2025.
If you would like to be involved in the Mary Linwood project, you can sign up here.
The giant skein of threads will be included in my exhibition : Mary Linwood: Art, Stitch & Life at Leicester Museum September 2025 – January 2026.
Ruth Singer 
Let me know what you think