Three Textile Artists Refashion Thread Into Stories

Three textile – Sweden-born France-based Kristin Stattin, Derbyshire artist Bethany Duffy, and contemporary art quilter Joan Schulze each bend textile craft into something else entirely—thread as painting, thread as connection, fabric as layered narrative.

Needle and thread is supposed to be quiet work. Measured, domestic, familiar. But in the hands of three textile artists, it becomes something louder—something closer to painting, architecture, and story.

Kristin Stattin, Swedish-born and France-based, builds textiles that sit between embroidery and abstract painting. Her compositions are layered and deliberate, constructed with a limited set of techniques that she returns to again and again. The foundation is straight stitch, used in varied lengths, paired with dense clusters of French knots. She doesn’t describe her process as mere making. For Stattin. it’s mindfulness with a needle: she calls it “an exercise into being in the now. with my thoughts. feelings. senses. and to translate my inner voice through line. shape and colour”.

In a different direction, Bethany Duffy takes thread out of the background and makes it do the connecting. Based in Derbyshire. she treats textile work not as a surface medium but as a binding force—something that brings materials together. physically and visually. Her practice often draws on natural materials, including seashells, which she incorporates into the work alongside thread. Duffy’s training runs deep in classic hand embroidery techniques: goldwork, blackwork, whitework, stumpwork, canvas work, and crewel work. The effect is a practice where traditional methods aren’t preserved behind glass—they’re actively woven into a wider language of texture and assembly.

Then there’s Joan Schulze. a key figure in contemporary art quilting whose practice refuses to stay inside the frame of “traditional textile work.” For Schulze. fabric becomes a platform for layered visual narratives. Her quilt works incorporate collage, photography, painting, and print processes—tools and textures drawn from multiple corners of contemporary art. She is not just an artist who experiments across mediums; she is also a lecturer and a poet. adding another kind of craft to the way her narratives unfold.

Put these three practices side by side and the same thread keeps showing up—only the roles change. Stattin uses thread to build an abstract sense of presence. Duffy uses it to bind disparate materials into something coherent. Schulze uses it to carry stories that expand beyond cloth into collage, photography, painting, and print. What begins as “only so much you can do with a needle and thread” starts to look like a question of imagination. not limitation.

textile art embroidery quilting contemporary art Kristin Stattin Bethany Duffy Joan Schulze French knots straight stitch goldwork blackwork stumpwork canvas work crewel work seashells collage photography painting print processes