The Subversive Stitch

By Rozsika Parker,

Book cover of The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine

Book description

Rozsika Parker's re-evaluation of the reciprocal relationship between women and embroidery has brought stitchery out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts, created a major breakthrough in art history and criticism, and fostered the emergence of today's dynamic and expanding crafts movements.

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Subversive Stitch as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I read this book in the early 1980s when it was first published and it changed my view of sewing and made me understand its cultural importance and how its value has been diminished over the centuries. It is a seminal landmark feminist book, the first to ever explore why sewing is perceived as just womenā€™s work. Parker debates the nature of womenā€™s embroidery through time, the dutiful and the radical, the artistic and the unacknowledged and if it hadnā€™t been for this book I would never have become fascinated about people who sew not simply to decorate clothes orā€¦

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