Stitch with Sappho

Community Art Project

 
Exhibition now on!
 
Join us for the celebration event

This exhibition presents a large-scale collaborative textile installation created by artist Juliet D Collins and participants in her Stitch with Sappho workshops during 2026. Through stitched text, layered fabrics and thread, and mixed media elements, the work responds to surviving fragments of Sappho’s poetry.

Inspired by the poet’s fragmented legacy the work explores queer and feminist themes reflecting on what survives and what is lost. Combining personal reflection with collective making, the installation becomes a living portrait of Sappho not as a fixed historical figure, but as a presence that remains relevant today.

Stitch with Sappho is a collaborative contemporary textile art project. Through a workshop series participants were invited to to explore creative textile-making through the lens and words of Ancient Greek poet Sappho.  

Inspired by Sappho’s fragmented legacy, we explored queer and feminist themes, the subjective female voice, the natural world and everyday objects that she honours. Through making, stitching and conversation, we reflected on how Sappho’s work has been reinterpreted across time, and what her fragments reveal about what survives and what is lost. 

Each themed session guided makers to create one or more small textile fragments that have become part of a large-scale suspended installation artwork. Sessions included: guided skill-building focused on freehand machine embroidery; concept discussion; and open making time. Hand stitchers and hand embroiderers were also encouraged.

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Workshops were free and took place over 8 sessions and a number of working bees. The sessions provided participants:

  • a welcoming, inclusive creative space for beginners through to experienced textile makers 

  • a blend of guided technique, skill sharing, open making time and reflective discussion 

  • opportunity to learn the foundations of freehand machine embroidery 

  • exploration of Sappho’s legacy, including queer and feminist themes 

  • relaxed conversation that encourages respectful sharing of everyone’s ideas and points of view 

  • all materials and equipment provided (you may also bring your own) 

  • contribute what is made in the sessions to a large collaborative installation artwork 

  •  choice to attend a single session or participate in the full series 

Reusing and recycling of textile materials was strongly encouraged. 

All creations have contributed to the collective installation artwork and every contributor is fully credited in the final artwork.