Your basket is currently empty!
The Red Dress
Conversations in StitchEmma Bovill (ed)£25.00
The upcoming book The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch, will share the deeper story of The Red Dress, its embroiderers and my own story whilst opening up the wider issues the garment prompts for its audiences through thematic essays by individuals involved in the greater project on subjects such as empowerment, finding voice, feminism, community and healing trauma.
The Red Dress will be published in May 2025, preorder here. Choose from the Limited Edition hardback or the soft back book. There will also be an ebook next year.
Available on back-order
Description
The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch celebrates the award-winning garment conceived by artist Kirstie Macleod and created by 380 individuals in 51 countries over 14 years from 2009–2023. The dress weaves together the diverse stories of its contributors across borders and boundaries uniting artisans and audiences in the shared community of embroidery.
Available in softback, limited-edition hardback and as an e-book, The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch is a sensitive but energetic curation of material from the dress’ incredible ongoing journey. It features poignant hand-selected embroiderer stories, thought-provoking and illuminating commissioned essays on themes The Red Dress brings up, such as identity, empowerment and healing trauma, and reflections from milestones in the project. The book explores links with the Royal School of Needlework, its invitation to the PACE Winter Session on Equality and Non-Discrimination in 2023 and its inclusion in the ‘Knots that Bind’ exhibition at Hampi Art Labs in India in 2024, nearly two decades after Kirstie’s original travels to the country which sewed the first seeds for the garment.
As creator and custodian of The Red Dress, Kirstie Macleod traces the metamorphosis of the project in terms of both design, impact and ambition. She reveals personal insights from her extensive travels with the dress, which will be listed in the Guinness World Records as the largest collaborative embroidery project, including details of its creation, reception and continuing exhibition tour. Kirstie also shares the background of and practical instructions for specific embroidery styles featured on the dress.
‘There are so many special and unique memories to recount from the project, such as four-year old Ukrainian refugee Adele presenting me with her design for the dress at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, Bedouin Jabaliya women dancing around the completed dress in Egypt’s Sinai desert and mother and daughter Sabina and Ajna Jusić embracing each other while draped in the bodice and skirt of the dress at the ‘Speaking Out’ exhibition at the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina,’ says Kirstie. ‘Through a combination of text, images and detailed illustrations, the book captures and communicates these moments and many more, amplifying their messages and meaning.’
The Red Dress will be published on 21 May 2025, preorder here. Choose from the Limited Edition hardback or the paperback book
You may also like…
-
Connecting Threads
£21.00Connecting Threads brings together twelve textile projects completed between 1981 and 2024. Each one acts as a social history document, providing tactile evidence of often untold stories of people on the margins, unexamined histories and overlooked places, all through stitch.
-
The Red Dress
£45.00The upcoming book The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch, shares the deeper story of The Red Dress, its many contributors and embroiderers as well as the story of its creator Kirstie Macleod. The book opens up the wider issues the garment prompts for its audiences through thematic essays by individuals involved in the greater project on subjects such as empowerment, finding voice, feminism, community and healing trauma. The Red Dress will be published in May 2025, preorder here. Choose from the Limited Edition hardback or the soft back book. There will also be an ebook next year.
Related titles
-
Beyond Darning
£19.99This beautiful new darning book is translated from the Japanese book Darning Brooches by Hikaru Noguchi.
Complete with full step-by-step instructions for beginners and creative inspiration for the more seasoned darner from the queen of mending. Available July 2024. -
Finding Quiet Strength
£24.00Finding Quiet Strength by Judith Kleinman will be your personal life survival kit. The ideas in this book can help on this journey of finding a quiet, flexible strength, which gives us a greater capacity to choose how we want to be in the world. If this intrigues you, then this book is for you.
‘I learned a lot from working with Judith Kleinman. She was able to locate in me a stillness and equilibrium I didn’t know I had…’ Nick Hornby
-
Intelligent Hands
£19.99Recent years have seen a decline in craft and creative education in schools and a shift from practical to theoretical learning models in higher education. Young people are leaving school with no idea that craft-based careers are even possible, and graduates of craft-based degree courses are entering the workplace with so few hand skills that their employers must train them from scratch.
Where did the idea come from that white-collar work should be rewarded more with money and status than that of a blue-collar worker? Intelligent Hands looks at this phenomenon, the historical precedents that led us here and why hand skills are crucial in education and for lifelong learning. The authors are on a mission to enlighten the uninitiated and persuade the nay-sayers who dismiss craft as no more than a nice hobby or believe that doing things with your hands is for those who can’t use their heads.
