Life Stories

Life Stories shows readers how to create textile art with a palpable sense of story, about ordinary people and everyday life.

This book delves into the three things that most inspire Ali Ferguson as a textile artist - Collected stuff, Words and Clothing. Ali shares the stories and thinking processes behind pieces of her work alongside the techniques that she uses, instructions for making projects and a thoughtful curation of related work from other contemporary textile artists working with similar themes.

Part One looks at Inspiration and Stitching, showing the many ways that Ali is continually gathering and storing inspiration. This section contains instructions for making a 'Stitcher's Thought Book'.

Part Two shows readers how ordinary things such as old letters and postcards, photographs, vintage magazines and old sewing paraphernalia can provide endless inspiration for creating personal textile art. This section includes projects such as creating different styles of fabric photo books and cloth collages.

Part Three explores Ali's love of using words as inspiration. It shows different ways of incorporating writing into stitched textiles; for example, using pencil & stencil, rusting powder, inkjet & Thermofax printing in addition to hand stitching.

Part Four looks at clothing and accessories, an absolute treasure trove of ideas for any stitcher. This covers transforming used items of clothing into wearable story garments as well as ideas for creating beautifully adorned decorative garments that will have the reader's own personal stories firmly at their heart. Techniques and project ideas covered here includes collagraph printing and creating textile jewellery and bags.

This beautiful book is fully illustrated with photographs of finished work, processes and source materials both from Ali's own creative practice and that of other leading textile artists, to provide a range of inspiration and different points of view.

About the Author

Ali Ferguson is an embroiderer and textile artist who is renowned for her exquisitely beautiful and nostalgic work focused on the home. She works from The Purple Thread Shed, a cosy garden studio that also lends its name to Ali's popular Instagram profile @thepurplethreadshed. She is a member of The Society for Embroidered Work and has written for Textileartist.org. Her first book Cloth Stories was published by Batsford in 2024. She lives in Roslin, Midlothian.