Meet: Tina Crawford

Tina Crawford is a free embroidery artist, which means she uses the sewing machine without any drawings or markings on the material, so a line is made instantly. During the lockdown, she created ‘Connected by a Thread’, a massive project where over 100 stories were embroidered, showing what people got up to during the first UK lockdown. It is currently housed in the Science Museum.

A Central Saint Martins (CSM) graduate, Tina spoke to us about the creation of Connected by a Thread and what she’s been up to since.

You graduated from Central Saint Martins, UAL. What your time at the College was like?

I started in 1991 which now feels like a lifetime ago! The bar was really smoky for a start! The course was nothing like it is now- I was incredibly experimental and liked to use other materials but it was very traditional. I remember Ron, our tutor saying to get the skills behind us at college then be experimental when you leave - I didn’t listen but he was so right! It’s much harder to design with transitional constraints- it’s very easy to be different!

You mentioned your piece 'Connected by a Thread', can you tell us more about this?

Without being able to work in my studio, banished to my home with only my sewing machine, no stack of fabrics to choose from, but I was itching to work. Right at the start of lockdown, I knew I wanted to create work as a reaction to it; I wasn’t sure what.

The idea of isolation conjured up images of embroidery hoops (which I don’t actually use to work with) connected with threads. I genuinely found social media a lifesaver, Twitter in particular – it can be an awful, judgmental place but in the first couple of months of isolation it was a community – I tapped into this. I put out tweets asking for photos of your #lockdownmoments and they came in; gardening, bird-watching, baking, everything was actually quite joyful and I didn’t expect it – I thought I’d get loneliness and rationing of loo rolls.

I started embroidering what came in and ‘framing’ them in embroidery hoops with the idea of connecting them.  But quite soon in the Stag and Bow (a lovely haberdashery emporium in Forest Hill) had an offer on Instagram for the collection of off-cuts and scraps from a group that had been stitching NHS scrubs – I leapt at it! (Well, my husband cycled to Sydenham for them). Once I got the scraps I knew how my piece would look. The off-cuts were different shades of blue and I wanted to just stitch in white.

I embroidered each photo but once finished I dragged the thread so it was still connected to the next with a gap between the next scrap and so on... Each piece was connected by a thread exactly how I felt social media was; we all seemed to come from the same place. More stories and photos came in and I accidentally changed the hashtag to #lockdownhighlights because of the positivity; babies were born, birthdays celebrated, and lots of love for pets all the time. I kept the continuous thread going on to the next story …. There is one point where after I cut the thread- I’ve stitched a single black square, not only to mark the social media pause of BLM #blackouttuesday but also to represent those that were disconnected and very much isolated.

Since you completed it, what has been the reaction to Connected by a Thread?

The reaction was great - I got a few institutions keen on it and it’s now got a new home in the Science Museum.