Book Review: A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier

After Ellie and Claudia's talk at the Wild festival at Winchester Cathedral, I found myself thinking about Tracy Chevalier's novel, A Single Thread. It's set in and around the cathedral itself, and it follows a group of women embroiderers stitching kneelers and cushions for its pews in the early 1930s.

On the surface, it's a quiet love story. But what drew me in was the way Chevalier explores craft as a source of healing. Stitching brings these women together, gives them a sense of belonging, and creates a space where they can grow, learn and, for some of them, slowly begin to mend.

The story unfolds in the long shadow of the First World War, when so many women were living with the consequences of enormous loss. Many of the characters are carrying grief for husbands, brothers and the men they had hoped to marry. At the same time, they live in a society that offers women very few places to be fully and freely themselves. For them, the embroidery group becomes a lifeline.

It's a theme Ellie explores so beautifully through her own work, her teaching and, most recently, her book Weaving as Art Therapy. It's something we at Elka understand instinctively too. The quiet, extraordinary power of making with our hands. There's something about sitting around a table with others, hands busy and conversation flowing, that allows us to set down what we're carrying, even if only for an afternoon. People come to our workshops for all sorts of reasons and from all walks of life, yet once they're brought together through making, they naturally begin to support and comfort one another. It's soul-soothing, and quite unlike anything else.

Chevalier uses embroidery to draw together so many strands of history and thought. The stitching connects generations of women, but it also links the architecture of the cathedral with its ornamentation, its theology, its folklore and the countless people who have passed through its doors.

It's a lovely reminder that none of the crafts we practise truly exist in isolation. Each is part of something much larger, woven through generations and across mediums, beliefs and traditions. In A Single Thread, all of these ideas come together gracefully within what is, at first glance, a gentle and understated love story. 

If you'd like to read it, you can find it here (affiliate link):
https://uk.bookshop.org/a/16524/9780008153847