Thread Stories

So far this year I have read three textile books.  Two of them even have the same title! but they are very different in tone and topic.  Most of the time, my reading is just for escape and enjoyment, and two of these books fit that category.  The third was more difficult, but important for me to read.

And since I think in textiles, I visualized each book as a textile creation. 🙂  Also, since these books weren’t illustrated, I supplemented these reviews with some images from OpenVerse that seemed to fit in.

Book One, John Scott’s Threads of Life

I see this book as a sparkly Fortuny collar of silk organza — short and whimsical, but with a wealth of knowledge built into its structure.

I had never heard of its author John Scott, but apparently he is the Tim Gunn of Great Britain (or maybe Tim Gunn is the John Scott of the USA). This book is two books in one — a book of fabric and sewing techniques and tips, interspersed with accounts of his career as a costume supervisor in film and theatre. Some of the projects he has worked on include the Poirot series, some James Bond movies, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and The Ghost and the Darkness. His tone is positive throughout and it sounds like he had so much fun working on all the projects.

I really enjoyed learning what goes into making the costumes ready for the production.  Here is just one example:

Being on location is great fun, it gets the blood pumping.  If it’s a one day shoot, all the equipment trucks need to get there early, then you set up in a tent or in rooms within the location.  Sometimes you can get to a location a little ahead to set up, but other times it’s literally: get there, speedy set up, dress the extras, dress the actors, squeeze in a location breakfast, and start the day’s filming. At the end of the day you have to clear all the costumes, do the washing (in the faithful old twin tub), stow away the truck and drive home.  Exhausting but exhilarating.  – p. 96 of 217

He is still working today on a shopping network and you can find him on YouTube.  (It seems kind of funny to watch a shopping channel session on YouTube, where you can’t dial in and get the daily deal, but I can see where it would be a nice companion video to have going in the background while you are sewing.)

Book Two —  Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World by Clara Parkes

Knitlandia takes us along to a variety of textile events — knitting conferences, workshops in the woods, yarn mills, and a textile tour of Iceland, to name a few.  We go behind the scenes to meet with a publisher, and to film episodes for a public television series (you have to get people to understand what yarn is perfect for the project, without being able to mention the brand name!).  There are no pictures in this book, but Parkes’ striking descriptions make scenes so clear, I think even non-yarn people would understand exactly what she is talking about:

…the room opened up into a space I can only describe as a yarn cathedral … the windows now showcased Luisa’s masterpiece on the next wall: a writhing waterfall of handspun skein upon skein of explosive color and texture unlike anything I’d ever seen. Brilliant mohair locks shimmered against matte wool fibers that seemed to be still in the process of twisting together. It was so stunning, so rare and spectacular, that you could only stop and gasp. It was the kind of place that made you talk in a whisper.

I see this book as a strand of yarn following a path, with flourishes of flowers and creatures.  Each chapter was like a refreshing mini-vacation in the yarn world. 🙂

Clara Parkes is the author of The Knitter’s Book of Fleece and she writes and runs the fabulous Knitter’s Review website. I was happy to learn she has written quite a few books, because I want to read them all!

Book Three —  Threads of Life: a History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, by Clare Hunter

This was the most difficult book for me, but very important for me to have read. I had difficulty with the structure, because there is no chronology (or an apparent logic) to the narrative.  Each chapter is based on a theme, such as Loss, Protest, Art, or Frailty.  In some chapters, the author ties the theme to one of her personal experiences.  When she does, she skips around in time and place — 1984 in England, 1991 in Australia, 2016 in Scotland, 1995 in China; cleaning out the home of a relative, working in a dry cleaners’ as a young teen, traveling to Paris —  I kept feeling like, “Are you famous?  Am I supposed to be already familiar with the details of your career?”

And then each chapter has a welter of historic references, allusions, personal experiences, and scholarly accounts.  Here are just some of the topics touched on in the chapter on Identity:

• Identity: Palestinian embroidery translated into Fair Isle knitting in Glasgow, experiential tourism, Scottish kilt, German missionaries in Namibia, Ukrainian embroidery, forbidden clothing through the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions.

Here is a quote showing the complex writing style–

Sewing pieces of fabric together was believed to endow the pieced cloth with spiritual power, the needle’s magical strength permeating every join, the more joins, the greater potency.  This is the traditional source of the allure of patchwork and of quilting: sewn acts of resurrection, reconstitution, reconnection.  In many cultures it is believed that patchwork and pieced quilts made from peoples’ clothes transferred energy between generations, the dead and the living, mother and child, creating a collective human power, each salvaged piece transmitting it own force of identity.  (p. 130 of 414)

A quote like that makes me want to check a footnote for more specifics, but this book does not have footnotes or an index, and only a brief bibliography.

Most importantly though, this book was difficult for me to read because of the theme — it often deals with grim and intense events.  I have been aware of some of these events — the devastation of people’s lives caused by raising and processing cotton, fast fashion, etc.  But this book made me aware of so many more catastrophes. Reading these accounts, I felt the sorrow of the many people who have used textiles to witness to their tragedies; they have no other outlet. Hunter shares so many stories about textiles from around the world, from just the last few decades, that record military atrocities, unjust imprisonment, deep inequality.  I felt that I should have known more about all of these stories before. The one that sticks in my mind the most is the report of the mothers in Argentina who embroidered their missing children’s names on headscarves, and wore them when they paraded in front of the presidential palace every Thursday, for 33 years.

 

Not everything in the book is tragic though.  There are many accounts of groups creating textiles to foster community and self-expression, throughout history and in our day. 

When I read about those, I was impressed by the creativity of the people who brought groups together in spite of having few resources, and sometimes having to face opposition.  I also wondered why it never occurred to me to try to organize a community project!  I love to make quilts to donate, but that is a solitary endeavor.  I think that I am so used to having to explain why I stick to these inefficient hobbies (“You know you could buy that at KMart, right?” is a comment I hear often) that I am content to just find peace in my little sewing room.

I had to read Threads of Life in small doses, but I am glad I did.

I envision this book as an embroidery, with a nest of ribbons and fabric scraps at the bottom, representing all the historic and cultural allusions in each chapter, and then memorable figures rising out of that nest to represent the spotlighted creators.  Maybe someday I will create a little embroidery to capture that vision.  🙂

I found all of these books in Kindle Unlimited, and the last two are also available through the Hoopla library app.  If you blog on WordPress, there is a help page for using OpenVerse to find and insert images here.