Manchester Tapestry Project

Stitching in earnest is about to start!

Megastitchers will be taking part as a group but everyone can participate, even if you are a new or less experienced stitcher, as support will be available.  You need to book via Eventbrite. Limited places available but new bookings especially welcome on the Thursday evening sessions at the Whitworth. Megastitchers' Sue will be there to help. See the message from the Tapetry Team below.

We’d love you to join us for our upcoming stitching sessions for Threads of a City: The Manchester Tapestry Project, starting in October. The next stage of the project is to bring the tapestry panels to life through collaborative stitching, with participants working alongside one another and embroidering simultaneously.

Workshop details

There are two locations where you can take part, on different days of the week.

Mondays, 1–4pm, Manchester Histories Hub, Manchester Central Library. Book here.

Thursdays 5-8pm, and fortnightly Sundays 1-4pm, Whitworth Art Gallery. Book here.

You don’t need to attend every week, although regular participation is strongly encouraged. As this is a collaborative project, another stitcher may pick up where you left off the following week.

Everything you need will be provided, including materials, tools and visual guides to help you embroider the design. There’ll also be plenty of opportunity to practise stitches on scrap fabric before working on the tapestry itself. Our workshop assistants will be there throughout each session to demonstrate techniques and answer any questions.

Whether you’re an experienced embroiderer, have stitched before but are a little rusty, or are a complete beginner, you’re very welcome. No previous experience is necessary.

As always, hot drinks and biscuits will be available at every workshop! 

Booking information

Booking via Eventbrite is essential. There are limited spaces available at each workshop due to the space needed around each tapestry panel, and everyone attending will need their own ticket.

If you book a place but are no longer able to attend, please remember to cancel your ticket so that someone else has the opportunity to join us.

Further sessions will continue from January 2027, with new dates added to Eventbrite.

We hope you’ll be able to join us and become part of the next stage in this collaborative stitching project. We look forward to stitching with you! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch at info@manchesterhistories.co.uk

Best wishes,
Threads of a City team

Programme 2026 to 2027

 The programme has been updated with more details and some changes because of tutor availabilty. Click on the link on the right to see what they are.

September meeting

 A new stitching year .... and what a great start we had!

The morning kicked off with a free workshop to introduce our new 'Artist of the Year' - Ton Schulten. Our leader was member, Julie, who told us snippets of Ton's life (he sadly died in 2025) inbetween getting us to complete various drawing tasks to explore how we could move towards interpreting artwork in stitch.  This is Julie's sample book:

Considering many of us cringed at the dreaded 'd'(rawing!) word, we were very willing to sit with pencils and crayons to follow Julie's instructions.  It was a good introduction to drawing more freely and looking at tone/shade and colour before thinking about stitch. Here are some works in progress.

Thank you, Julie, for an inspiring workshop. 

Our afternoon speaker was Kate Wells from Sheffield with a talk, 'Land, Sky & Gold' about her commissioned work and experimentation for it.  Kate uses a 1930s Irish machine, which has a variable-width swing needle controlled by a knee lever (and no foot!) on dissolvable fabric or fine fabrics such as silk organza and crepelline. Inspiration is taken from a multitude of sources - exhibitions, journeys, walks - with thoughts, notes, drawings and small experiments recorded in numerous sketchbooks.  Some of the finished works use miles and miles of gold thread.

Kate passed around some of her larger samples which we were able to handle - not as delicate as they looked - and, at the end of the talk we browsed through the amazing sketchbooks. What an encouragement to keep one ourselves! Thank you, Kate.

Kate has a great website - https://www.katewellsartist.co.uk - showing her painted and machine-embroidered work, as well as gold lace samples.