Threads of Life

A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle

By: Clare Hunter

Narrated by: Siobhan Redmond

A globe-spanning history of sewing, embroidery, and the people who have used a needle and thread to make their voices heard.

From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances.

Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents - from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland - to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story.

©2019 Clare Hunter (P)2021 Tantor

Brilliant perspective and delivery

I had to buy a hard copy of the book because there’s so much intriguing and tantalizing information that I want to go deeper into. Great stories.

Fantastic

Shows the importance of sowing both in the past and present and explains how it often gets overlooked since it is women’s work.

Textile bucket list.

Love this read. I must obtain the actual book. All the places mentioned would make an excellent travel venue. A stitchy vacation.

Loved it

Such a phenomenal book for everyone interested in the hidden world of women in the past. Such an amazing find. Made me realise how powerful needle and threads have been in the shaping of our past. Truly blessed to have found this book.

Loved this book

This book was super engaging and full of useful information about the untold and unrecorded history of women’s needle art and sewing. A must read

A Moving History of Needlework

I've had the hard copy of this book for years without actually reading it. Since discovering the audio book, I've listened to this three times and likely will do so again in the future. The narration is simply phenomenal. it's easy to forget that it's Redmond narrating and not Hunter. This isn't a comprehensive history of needle, thread and fabric; but the histories of needlework told are inspiring, heartbreaking and thought provoking. I hope Hunter sent a copy of this to the writing workshop leader who asked how her book on "knitting" was coming along.

Love!

The history of something you don’t really think about. I thoroughly enjoyed my journey through Threads of Life!.

The Fabric of Civilization is much better, IMHO.

I had to sped this up to 150% and skip liberally. A needleworker since I was a child, I expected to love it; I didn’t.

Yes, anything associated with women has historically been sneered at by men, or at least viewed as lesser, but you don’t have to beat it like a dead horse. And there are long passages that are just dry recitations of facts.

I found The Fabric of Civilization much more interesting. While everyone is familiar with the Fibonacci sequence, for example, of far greater significance is the fact that as the young son of a cloth buyer, he recognized the potential of Arabic numerals and zero for the west and promoted them upon his return, ultimately writing a book about their use. Also in The Fabric of Civilization, I learned that alchemy and the origins of chemistry had more to do with replicating costly dyes than turning lead into gold.

It baffles me that these two books have the same rating.