Embroidered Stories: Women's Domestic Needlework from Italian Diaspora

11/21/2025

RECLAIMING OUR COLLECTIVE INHERITANCE: A Palestinian Diaspora Collection
November 15, 2025 to January 17, 2026

The Palestinian Thobe is more than an embroidered garment—it is a living archive. For Palestinians in the diaspora, these intricately stitched dresses are tangible connections to a homeland many have never seen, yet fiercely carry within them. Each motif tells a story—of identity, ancestral village, and unbroken resilience. Tragically, many Thobes have been lost to time, war, and dispossession—from heirloom dresses smuggled out of Palestine to stolen Thobes rediscovered in antique markets, their narratives preserved only in the whispers of fading thread.

RECLAIMING OUR COLLECTIVE INHERITANCE: A Palestinian Diaspora Collection November 15, 2025 to January 17, 2026 The Palestinian Thobe is more than an embroidered garment—it is a living archive. For Palestinians in the diaspora, these intricately stitched dresses are tangible connections to a homela...

04/26/2025

The Women of Steel Project began in February 2021, aspiring to memorialize these women through public art, such as murals, statues, portraits, photographs, and documentaries. The first phase concluded with the unveiling of Les Femmes d’Acier mural on October 18, 2023, at St-Simon Apôtre Park, in what is still referred to as Montreal’s Garment District, thanks to a partnership between the Tyxna Art Collective and numerous community organizations. More phases are planned, including additional artwork and a commemorative statue.

With community support, as well as participation in events like AccentiFest at the University of Calabria in 2023 and New York’s Triangle Fire Memorial, the project has fostered international connections and gathered historical testimonies. Through this collective effort, the Women of Steel Project seeks to ensure that the legacy of these pioneering women endures as a testament to their resilience, contribution, and inspiration for future generations.

The Women of Steel Project stands as a powerful tribute to Montreal’s immigrant textile and garment workers, honoring their resilience, sacrifices, and lasting contributions to the community. By capturing their stories through art and public memorials, the project celebrates the strength and solidarity of these women in the face of hardship. This initiative not only preserves the memory of these pioneering women but, as future phases unfold, it will inspire generations to recognize and value the enduring impact of immigrant women on Montreal’s cultural and economic fabric.

The Women of Steel project pays tribute to the Italian immigrant women of Montreal’s first generation who dedicated their lives to the textile industry, particularly in the Chabanel, St-Urbain and St-Viateur street areas. These women, essential to both the industry and their families, faced arduou...

03/12/2025

https://pieceworkmagazine.com/the-sampler-issue-call-for-submissions-piecework-summer-2025/

From practical to fanciful, samplers are a great way to study crafts of the past.

11/19/2024

We remember Sandra Mortola Gilbert (1936-2024) who's poem "Daguerreotype: Lace Maker" opens 'Embroidered Stories':

From days spent bending over the pattern,
eyes and fingers caught in the tightening
mazes of the lace,
she has assumed the shape
of a hook, its deft ferocity,
thin glitter and abstraction.
She stares into the camera, very old,
no children now, no stewpots, never a berrying
afternoon with sun like pure hot iron
at her back, nothing but a shawl
on her shoulders now, black and thick:
and her eyes, passionate hooks,
say only the lace, the lace is left,
only the white paths, the stitches like steps
in a dance whose meaning is still unknown,
the walls of thread impossible to cross,
the tiny corners, the fields of webs and flowers,
the serious knotting and unknotting at the end.

10/10/2024

New exhibit in London
BELONGINGS challenges anti-immigration narratives and creates pathways for belonging with people seeking sanctuary. It centres an exhibition by renowned artist Susan Aldworth featuring the imagined contents of the suitcase her grandmother brought with her when she was migrating from Northern Italy to London in 1924. Thirty-five individual antique clothes, including a nightgown that was in the original suitcase, are hand-embroidered with family photographs, stories and recipes. Suspended in mid-air, they highlight the transitory and emotional nature of an uprooted life.

Visit this new, free exhibition in The Arcade challenging anti-immigration narratives and creating pathways of belonging with people seeking sanctuary.

05/27/2024

SNL on fast fashion!

05/17/2024

Needlework by Leonilde Frieri Ruberto, Laura E. Ruberto's grandmother, at the Heinz History Center

eMuseum is a powerful web publishing toolkit that integrates seamlessly with TMS to bring dynamic collection content and images to your website, intranet, and kiosks.

04/26/2024

"Learning to sew, crochet, and embroider from my mother and grandmothers as a child laid the groundwork for my career as a textile historian. While in college, I attended a quilting bee benefiting a member of the Mennonite community facing health issues with my maternal grandmother, Adella Kanagy, in Pennsylvania. When I shared that I was studying quilting in my fiber arts program, a warm chuckle rippled across the room. My professors, however, did not have a sense of humor about my affection for “craft,” a word they uttered as if poisonous. At a critique for an installation of numerous doilies that I handmade, purchased, and inherited, one professor couldn’t fathom that my project was not meant as an ironic joke, but I stood firm in my sincerity."

When will art institutions finally pay respect to our foremothers’ artistry?

03/20/2024

https://casaitaliananyu.org/events/it-begins-name

The event will also be broadcast live on ourYouTube, Facebook, and website Alba Capriati LectureIt Begins with a NameLearning to Remember the Triangle Fire

09/23/2023

Patricia Miranda hanging her brilliant work of dyed and assembled vintage needlework for the John D Calandra Italian American Institute's exhibit "A Legacy of Making: 21 Contemporary Italian American Artists" opening on September 27th.

09/12/2023

Now, as the art world reckons with just how narrow its conception of artistic genius has been, the hierarchy placing art above craft — and intuition above skill — looks ever more gendered and archaic. And in an age when we spend much of our time touching the flat surfaces of screens, this tactile art form feels newly seductive to makers and viewers alike as both a contrast with and a culmination of modern sensory experience. Ambitious and experimental younger artists are embracing fiber and textiles for themselves. While first-generation fiber artists traveled the globe studying with local artisans, today’s practitioners are more likely to rely on their own histories and cultural traditions.

Long caught in the liminal space between craft and something more prestigious, works of thread and fabric are reaching newfound institutional recognition.

09/09/2023

In every stitch, there is a story.
Like layers of history, the hand-stitched Palestinian embroidery known as tatreez, traditionally used to ornament Palestinian dress, tells of towns and villages lost, old customs abandoned, past lives and survival. The stitched designs and symbols once functioned almost as an identification card.

In 2021, UNESCO added Palestinian embroidery to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognizing it as “a widespread social and intergenerational practice in Palestine,” a symbol of national pride and a way in which women supplement family income. But like other Indigenous handicrafts across the world, it faces threats, including mechanization and abandonment of old styles of dress.

Traditional Palestinian embroidery is on UNESCO’s list of cultural heritage. Now there is a push to revive interest in the craft among younger generations.