Monday, 25 August 2025

Connecting Threads - Lynn Setterington at the Fashion & Textile Museum, London

Lynn Setterington - Respect + Protect - 2009

On a recent trip to London I went to the Fashion & Textile Museum to see Lynn Setterington's Connecting Threads exhibition in the Museum's Fashion Studio. Lynn is a socially engaged textile artist who has worked with many different communities to co-create textile pieces that bear a message.  Here's a flavour of Connecting Threads.

The picture above is the result of an Arts & Science partnership project with Professor of Microbiology at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), Joanna Verran.  Working with different communities across Manchester, they produced this quilt for World Aids Day in 2009. Paricipants added red cross stitches to this piece  which acts as a reminder that the virus continues to affect people's lives.

This is one of Setterington's early embroideries, rooted in place and representative of everyday life...

Lynn Setterington - Leeds Market - 1984
Hand & Machine Embroidery

A number of Lynn's textile projects have been influenced by the signature quilt or cloth.  These items date back to the first half of the 19th century in the USA and initially bore the names of families and friends. Later, the signature quilt/cloth was used as a means of fundraising for good causes or particular projects.  People paid to sign their name on cloth which was then embroidered creating a finished piece bearing embroidered supporters' signatures. 

"Remembering Emily" was made to commemorate Emily Wilding Davison, a suffragette who was accidentally killed by the King's horse at the Epsom Derby, whilst trying to make her protest. One hundred years later, Setterington got staff and students at MMU to embroider their names on cotton fabric which were later machine stitched together into a 10m long banner...

Lynn Setterington - Remembering Emily - 2013

In "Signature Bags", these bags bear the names of members of Katab, a group of textile artisans, in Ahmedabad, India.  Made from khadi cloth, these bags, by bearing names, acknowledge the makers whose skills and work so often go unidentified...

Lynn Setterington - Signature Bags - 2011
 
"Threads of Identity" was made to commemorate the death of Ahmed Iqbal Ullah, a young boy killed in 1986 as a result of a racially motivated crime at a school in south Manchester. Working with 16 boys from Burnage Academy, Setterington got them to collect the names of 10 people important in their lives and to embroider these names on white cotton handkerchiefs within the letters spelling Burnage Academy 4 Boys. These were then stitched together using a faggoting machine to create the wall hanging, shown below, that has been on display at the school ever since...

Lynn Setterington - Threads of Identity - 2016

This piece, made by Setterington, draws attention to the Construction industry which has the highest suicide rate of any sector...

Lynn Setterington - Pearly King of Eccles

The "World Wellbeing Map" is a comment on climate change.  Made by over 100 people learning English at Oldham Library and MMU students, it highlights rising sea temperatures.  Made by hand, it upcycles products from the construction industry - thread from discarded debris netting stitched into rendering mesh...

Lynn Setterington - World Wellbeing Map - 2024

Setterington has also used the Suffolk Puff or YoYo (American) 
in many of her pieces. These are gathered circles of fabric that make a decorative rosette. Below is "House" made from debris netting gathered up into Suffolk puffs and stitched together, commenting on the housing crisis, lack of affordable homes and poor mental health of construction workers...

Lynn Setterington - House (detail) - 2024

Made during the Covid Crisis, "Living with Loss", apes historic samplers but with a modern twist by repurposing materials from the construction industry.  The loss of a loved one is something we all have to face at some time in our lives.  The unfinished nature of the piece is purposeful...

Lynn Setterington - Living with Loss - 2020

This is a really interesting exhibition and there are also some short films about some of the projects exhibited here but also about a project, Sew Near - Sew Far (2017), developed with the Bronte Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire. Here the pseudonymous male signatures of the Bronte sisters (Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell), found at the museum, were writ large on Haworth Moor where it could be read by walkers on the Bronte Way.  The signatures were made from debris netting which themselves contained the stitched signatures of participants in the project.  These signatures were stitched into the debris netting with a wool and string mix. 

This exhibition is on until Sunday 7 September 2025 in the Museum's Fashion Studio, which is sometimes closed for special events and workshops, so please check ahead if you want to be sure of access.  There is also a Connecting Threads book by Setterington, on sale in the museum shop, which is an interesting read.

Textiles: The Art of Mankind is in the main gallery - blogpost coming soon.

There is no cafe in the Fashion and Textile Museum but there are plenty close by and the Museum does have a shop.  The Museum is a short walk from London Bridge station.





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