Sew What?

In this episode, Isabella interviews Dr Freya Gowrley, historian of material and visual culture focusing on the home, the body, and collage. The two discuss Freya's recent article and upcoming book, as well as patchwork and the intersection of needlework and emotions.

This episode is all about beadwork. Isabella begins the episode discussing 17th-century English beadwork before moving on to discuss Native American beadwork techniques. 

In this episode, Isabella interviews Laura Beltrán-Rubio, a PhD student who focuses on the consumption, dissemination, and representation of dress and practices of self-fashioning in 18th-century colonial Spanish America (specifically modern-day Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela). The two discuss surviving South American costume and textiles, the presence of needlework in the Spanish colonies, and learning how to stitch from your grandmother.As always, images and resources discussed in this episode are available on the "Sew What?" Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages.

In this episode, Isabella discusses needlework created by suffragettes and a woman with an alias of "Myrllen," as well as the British charity Fine Cell Work.As always, images and resources discussed in this episode are available on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @sewwhatpodcast.

In this episode, Isabella discusses needlework created by imprisoned women, focusing specifically on the embroidery of Mary Queen of Scots, Agnes Richter, and Lorina Bulwer. As always, images and resources discussed in this episode are available on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @sewwhatpodcast.

In this episode, Isabella interviews Dr Serena Dyer, historian of dress, consumption, and material culture. The two discuss Serena's two upcoming books, Material Lives: Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century and Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Nation of Makers. They also talk about Serena's favourite needleworked objects and her passion for making historic costume.As always, images and resources discussed in this episode are available on Twitter and Instagram at @sewwhatpodcast.

In this episode, Isabella interviews Dr Alison Mayne, a textile researcher and practitioner who wrote her PhD about knitting and crocheting Facebook groups and wellbeing. The two discuss the intersection of needlework and social media, new Soviet dress, fashions from the feminist magazine Spare Rib, and the continued fight for inclusivity in the world of needlework and textiles more generally. As always, images and resources discussed in this episode are available on Twitter and Instagram at @sewwhatpodcast.

In this episode, Isabella discusses one of her greatest loves, embroidered cabinets and caskets made in the 17th century. She explains the differences between cabinets and caskets, how they were made, some exceptional surviving examples, and what these boxes can tell us about the relationship between early modern women and privacy. 

In this episode, Isabella talks with Kelli Coles, a PhD student who researches Black American schoolgirl samplers. The two discuss Black samplers made by girls across America's East Coast in the late eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries.

In this episode, Isabella examines a group of mid-19th-century samplers made by South Indian girls in a missionary school run by a British woman. She discusses the intersection of these samplers and colonialism, focusing on evidence of colonialism in the samplers' threads, inscriptions, and compositions.