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Quickthorn is an independent publisher creating practical and ethical books about making and personal resilience
The long-awaited Red Dress book is nearly here, with a fantastic team assembled and a beautiful selection of stories, images, reflections and essays from the 14 year global collaborative embroidery project ready to be compiled into an exquisitely designed and ethically and sustainably produced book. With the garment now completed and touring the world, Kirstie Macleod is focusing on the documentation and preservation of the dress and greater project so it can be enjoyed by more people globally and generations of future audiences in years to come. The upcoming book will share the deeper story of The Red Dress, its embroiderers and Kirstie’s story whilst opening up the wider issues the garment prompts for its audiences through thematic essays by individuals involved in the greater project on subjects such as empowerment, finding voice, feminism, community and healing trauma.
Thanks to everyone who has made the books possible. You can continue to preorder the The Red Dress book by preordering the books here
About Quickthorn
Quickthorn publishes books with an emphasis on making, and personal agency. Making empowers us to be more self-sufficient and take control over the way we consume.
Making something with your own hands is a reflective process, it encourages you to slow down when the pace of life feels too fast, to be patient and to learn that good things don’t happen immediately. There is a huge joy in making, to create something that is unique, tangible evidence of your time and labour.
We have been researching new ways to reduce our environmental impact, using local suppliers and printers where possible, sourcing recyclable packaging and recently using a cellulose lamination process for book finishing that is fully biodegradable and compostable.
Quickthorn Books are distributed to the trade in the UK and Europe by Centralbooks.com (orders@centralbooks.com) and in the US through IPGBooks and in Australasia by Woodslane
We are always interested in submissions for illustrated non-fiction titles around craft and making (we don’t publish fiction or poetry thanks). If you think your idea might fit with our other books, please send a brief outline of your ideas to info[at]quickthornbooks.com
Blog posts
- Connecting Threads
‘Lynn Setterington is an extremely important artist working on the edges of politics and ethnography.’ Jane Webb, Warwick University Connecting Threads: Tactile social history brings together twelve textile projects completed between 1981 and 2024. Each one acts as a social history document, providing tactile evidence of often untold stories of people on the margins, unexamined histories and overlooked places, all through stitch. The resulting work is both personal and political. It ranges from tiny colourful hand embroidered fragments recording everyday life in… Read more: Connecting Threads
- The Red Dress
Support The Red Dress project fundraiser to produce a fabulous new book to record the journey of the project. The Crowdfunder starts 18 October 2024.
- Darned brooches
Since Hikaru’s Instagram live event I’ve been trying to make my own macaron brooch inspired by the ones in her latest book, Beyond Darning: Creative mending techniques. There are several kinds of project in the book, from patches and soft brooches, and then these round ones, named after those lovely French macarons. Hikaru uses ‘moulds’ and unable to get hold of any I’ve used jam jar lids, which seems to work out okay. Though not nearly as lovely as the… Read more: Darned brooches
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Press coverage
reviews On Mending
info[at]quickthornbooks.com
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Beyond Darning
£19.99This beautiful new darning book is translated from the Japanese book Darning Brooches by Hikaru Noguchi.
Complete with full step-by-step instructions for beginners and creative inspiration for the more seasoned darner from the queen of mending. Available July 2024. -
Connecting Threads
£21.00Connecting Threads brings together twelve textile projects completed between 1981 and 2024. Each one acts as a social history document, providing tactile evidence of often untold stories of people on the margins, unexamined histories and overlooked places, all through stitch. Available now, official publication 20 Jan 2025
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Darning
£19.00Climate change is making us rethink how we use resources and not subscribing to fast-fashion and re-using and mending our clothes has become a mark of pride. This is visible mending, more akin to embroidery and embellishment that will make your favourite clothing even more personal and save it from landfill.
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Finding Quiet Strength
£24.00Finding Quiet Strength by Judith Kleinman will be your personal life survival kit. The ideas in this book can help on this journey of finding a quiet, flexible strength, which gives us a greater capacity to choose how we want to be in the world. If this intrigues you, then this book is for you.
‘I learned a lot from working with Judith Kleinman. She was able to locate in me a stillness and equilibrium I didn’t know I had…’ Nick Hornby
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Fletcher’s Almanac
£12.99In short vignettes tied to the rhythms of the seasons, Kate Fletcher, fashion and sustainability pioneer, explores interrelationships between clothing and the natural world in this first volume of Fletcher’s Almanac. Writings and predictions for each month feature nature, not as the scenery against which fashion stories unfold, but the main event, and the connection of fashion and nature, the story. It has been said that fashion speaks capitalism. In these entries it speaks another tongue, the language of the earth.
A beautifully illustrated pocket-sized book to take with you on your forays into nature. This will be a limited edition, with the second volume of Fletcher’s Almanac coming next year.
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Intelligent Hands
£19.99Recent years have seen a decline in craft and creative education in schools and a shift from practical to theoretical learning models in higher education. Young people are leaving school with no idea that craft-based careers are even possible, and graduates of craft-based degree courses are entering the workplace with so few hand skills that their employers must train them from scratch.
Where did the idea come from that white-collar work should be rewarded more with money and status than that of a blue-collar worker? Intelligent Hands looks at this phenomenon, the historical precedents that led us here and why hand skills are crucial in education and for lifelong learning. The authors are on a mission to enlighten the uninitiated and persuade the nay-sayers who dismiss craft as no more than a nice hobby or believe that doing things with your hands is for those who can’t use their heads. -
On Mending
£19.99Celia Pym explores the varied evidence of damage: how repair draws attention to the places where garments and cloth wear down and grow thin. These personal tales document the intimate damage caused to clothing by everyday use and the parallels with the consequent wear and tear on the body.
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Rag Manifesto
£21.00Rag Manifesto is a unique, artist’s view of the traditional art of rag rug making for this age of the Anthropocene. Projects highlight a reverence for our lost textiles, a response to the environmental impact of fast fashion and a proof that rag is a rich resource, wrongly classed as a taboo material. Rachael Matthews gives us permission to cut up our old fabrics offering a support structure for decision making and a chart on how to make liberating decisions about destroying a garment.
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Small Steps to Less Waste
£19.99What are the tipping points that encourage people to make significant changes to their behaviour? This inspiring book includes ten stories of personal enlightenment and the practical changes they made.
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The Red Dress
£25.00The upcoming book The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch, will share the deeper story of The Red Dress, its embroiderers and my own story whilst opening up the wider issues the garment prompts for its audiences through thematic essays by individuals involved in the greater project on subjects such as empowerment, finding voice, feminism, community and healing trauma.
The Red Dress will be published in May 2025, preorder here. Choose from the Limited Edition hardback or the soft back book. There will also be an ebook next year.
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The Red Dress
£45.00The upcoming book The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch, shares the deeper story of The Red Dress, its many contributors and embroiderers as well as the story of its creator Kirstie Macleod. The book opens up the wider issues the garment prompts for its audiences through thematic essays by individuals involved in the greater project on subjects such as empowerment, finding voice, feminism, community and healing trauma. The Red Dress will be published in May 2025, preorder here. Choose from the Limited Edition hardback or the soft back book. There will also be an ebook next year.
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When words are not enough
£19.99Jane Harris is a psychotherapist and bereavement specialist. Jimmy Edmonds is a photographer and documentary film editor with over 100 credits on TV productions including the BAFTA winning Chosen for Channel 4. Together they run Active Grief Retreats as The Good Grief Project. This is their first book, exploring active and creative responses to grief and how they can help you to survive.
When Words are Not Enough: Creative responses to grief was first published October 2022
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