This short episode is a brief introduction to my research project about 18th century embroidery artist Mary Linwood. The episode includes a very short history about her, and then details of the community projects I’m running over the next few months, that you can take part in too. You can find out about them below, as well as a bit more about Mary Linwood here.
Stitching Emotions
Collaborative project for the Mary Linwood exhibition
We don’t know Mary Linwood’s feelings about her embroidery practice but she must have loved stitching. Women’s experiences in history are rarely recorded and we have very little written evidence of how they felt about doing embroidery.
This project gives a voice to women’s experience of stitching and embroidery and allows us to share why we do this practice of slow hand stitching.
All suitable* contributions to this collective project will be included in my exhibition Mary Linwood: Art, Stitch and Life at Leicester Museum Sept 2025 – Jan 2026.
Connected Threads
A community textile project related to Mary Linwood, Leicester’s forgotten embroidery celebrity!
Connected Threads is about making textiles together. We will run a series of workshops for groups and drop-in sessions for individuals to learn about cord making. Together, over a year, we will make a giant skein of thread which will be showcased in an exhibition about Mary Linwood in autumn 2025 at Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, New Walk.
Play here
Download the full transcript here
Related blog posts
Mary Linwood and Me
Behind the scenes for the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to make an exciting project happen. I’ve wanted to share the story of embroiderer Mary Linwood for even longer than that. I’m finally making it happen. Over the next year I am putting together an exhibition of Mary Linwood’s embroidery from Leicester Museums…
Connected Threads community textile project
The first event in the Mary Linwood project took place at The Big Textile Show in Leicester last weekend. Remembering Mary Linwoodand 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 toconstruct into a…
Stitching Emotions: call for contributions
Stitching Emotions is a new contributory project to make a piece for a large fabric book to be exhibited in my exhibition ‘Mary Linwood: Art, Stitch & Life’ in Sept 2025. We don’t know Mary Linwood’s feelings about her embroidery practice but she must have loved stitching. Women’s experiences in history are rarely recorded and…
Ruth Singer 
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