Table of contents for Summer 2026 in PieceWork

I have a fondness for blue-and-white textiles. I suspect many of us do, given how often this color combination appears across cultures, across time. One of my treasures is a small batik headcloth from Guizhou province, China. Artisans there draw intricate designs and symbols in wax before dipping the cloth into indigo vats until the darkest shades of blue emerge. The result is a story of culture and history rendered entirely in blue and white. That small cloth reminds me that these colors carry stories far beyond the item itself. This global fascination with blue and white forms the backbone of the stories gathered in this issue. Our contributors have traveled across the world, and the centuries, to bring you the stories. Mimi Seyferth learns about a centuries-old indigo resist-dyeing…

Shibori is a traditional Japanese method of shaped resist-dyeing in which cloth is bound, stitched, folded, or wrapped to prevent dye from reaching certain areas. When the fabric is dyed—often in indigo—the resisted sections create a range of distinctive patterns. There are several techniques, and each manipulates the cloth in a different way, resulting in unique textures and patterns. I have practiced several of these techniques and made some wonderful folded pieces. Many people are familiar with the bound style because tie-dyeing is a derivative. My favorite bound technique is not tied but created using an elastrator band. It’s fast, and the bands last forever. Pole Wrapped Arashi: The cloth is wrapped and bound around a pole, producing diagonal lines. Arashi means storm in Japanese, and I love the way…

Blaudruck, the German term for “blueprint” or “blue dyeing,” refers to a historical indigodyeing process practiced in Europe for centuries. Known as blaudruck in Austria and Germany, modrotisk in Slovakia, kékfestés in Hungary, and modrotlacˇ in the Czech Republic, this dyeing process involves printing patterns onto fabric with a dye-resistant paste. Then, after the paste has thoroughly dried, the printed fabric is repeatedly dipped in vats of indigo dye until the dyer believes the desired intensity of blue has been achieved. Thereafter, the fabric is washed, dried, and ironed, with the printed patterns emerging as white designs on an indigo-blue background. Although indigo dyeing has been practiced since antiquity using dye most commonly derived from the Indigofera tinctoria plant, indigo dye remained an expensive luxury in northern and central Europe…

Although this purse might be too small to hold a real, life-sized garter snake like Alice Roosevelt’s Emily Spinach, it is the perfect size to carry many other, nonliving items! Some examples are small needlework tools (tatting shuttle, crochet hooks, embroidery scissors and needles, small thread balls, or floss). This purse can also be used as a unique travel jewelry pouch. Regardless of its ultimate use, it is easy to stitch because of the simple, commonly used embroidery stitches. The utilitarian drawstring bag itself can be constructed using many different types of fabric— choose evenweave linens of various thread counts for cross-stitch designs, quilting cottons for whole cloth or pieced bags, or even lightweight canvas to protect small, intricate construction tools. The ideas and uses are endless. Note: DMC floss…

New Ways with Crochet 50 Innovative Crochet Stitch Patterns and Projects Olena Fedotova Pynes Hill, Exeter, UK: David & Charles, 2025. Paperback, 120 pages, $24.99. ISBN 9781446315170. Nordic Sailors’ & Fishermen’s Sweaters Modern Knitwear Inspired by Historical Patterns Lotte Rahbek and Gitte Verner Jensen New York: Abrams Books, 2025. Hardcover, 288 pages, $35. ISBN 9781419778711. Indian Block Printing An Inspirational Project Book Tess Grace and Holly Jones London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025. Paperback, 144 pages, $25. ISBN 9781789943412. Simply Sashiko Classic Japanese Embroidery Made Easy Nihon Vogue North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 2020. Paperback, 120 pages, $16.99. ISBN 9784805316245. The Year of Knots Modern Projects, Inspiration, and Creative Reinvention Windy Chien New York: Abrams Books, 2019. Hardcover, 192 pages, $30.00. ISBN 9781419732805.…

During one of our many conversations, Rachna paints stories so vivid they take shape before my very eyes. An example is a story about Mrs. Ven, who spends the week sleeping beside her newly planted rice paddy to guard the young shoots from hungry aquatic birds. In the daytime, she gathers piet, the jungle vine growing alongside the paddy, and later strips it, rolls it into yarn, and then knots the yarn into sturdy bags.…

In the 1840s, oral history has it, an entourage from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society presented King Moshoeshoe I of Lesotho in southern Africa with a gift of blankets and blueprint fabric. Both the blankets and the fabric became popular among the Basotho people, who later came to refer to the fabric as seshoeshoe in reference to their king. Some wearers of this cloth believe the name shweshwe, isishweshwe, or seshoeshoe also refers to the rustling sound the fabric makes when it is worn. This was not the people of southern Africa’s first encounter with blueprint fabric or blaudruk. That story started much earlier, in the days of the first Arab traders and later the Portuguese explorers who navigated the southern point of Africa. PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS, INDIGO, AND THE SEA…

Jordan Munk Martin is the founder of TATTER, a cultural textile organization that includes the iconic TATTER Blue Library. What is TATTER, and how did you form the idea and see it through? TATTER is a cultural arts organization wholly focused on the textile arts. We are an intergenerational conversation about cloth and its ability to connect us. We began with our blue textile research library and have become a museum offering a contemporary journal, a retail shop that champions the handmade, and more than 150 annual classes and events reaching over five thousand students globally. I cannot honestly say I had a fully realized vision when I began, nearly 10 years ago. What is vision, really? Vision is a synthesis, the intersection of many factors. TATTER was born out…

Among the many stories that form the American narrative, the legend of indigo is one that captures the ingenuity and resourcefulness symbolic of the American spirit. In this semiquincentennial summer, as we explore our understanding of the American identity, indigo’s importance in shaping that identity deserves a look. THE BLUE THREAD OF HISTORY To appreciate the significance of indigo in early American textiles requires a further step back in history to the reign of England’s King James I. This seventeenth-century monarch ushered in a period of great artistic, intellectual, and cultural activity. It was the age of Shakespeare, scientific reasoning, and seafaring adventures. James I put the full weight of the crown behind world exploration, founding the Virginia Company and filling the history books with the likes of Captain John…

Three iconic shades of blue—Alice blue, Lanvin blue, and Wallis blue—shaped the cultural imagination of the early twentieth century, moving from upper-class origins to widespread adoption in home sewing, embroidery, and everyday dress. Each hue carried with it shifting meaning of gender, women’s expanding roles beyond the home, and evolving notions of family and public life. At the same time, these colors marked the rise of modern womanhood and specifically introduced the world to celebrity culture and tabloid fascination with fashion, all against the backdrop of major historical events unfolding in the first three decades of the century. ALICE BLUE In January 1902, Alice Roosevelt (1884–1980), President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, made her social debut at the White House wearing an S-bend corseted “white chiffon built on white taffeta with elaborate…