The Subversive Stitch

This has been an influential book for me in thinking about the intersections of feminism, sewing, technology and forms of resistance. I am disappointed I could not make it to the recent conference – The Subversive Stitch Revisited: The Politics of Cloth – a one and a half day event dedicated to the memory of Rozsika Parker, who died in 2010 and held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I look forward to seeing online documentation of the event.

Has the pen or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human race as the needle?’ asked the writer Olive Schreiner. The answer is, quite simply, no. The art of embroidery has been the means of educating women into the feminine ideal, and of proving that they have attained it, but it has also provided a weapon of resistance to the constraints of femininity.

Parker, R. (2012) The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the making of the feminine, London and New York: I.B.Tauris