Fabric

'Subtle, compendious and rich ... an emotive and serious work of what you might call history on the distaff side' - James McConnachie, The Sunday Times

'Dazzling ... Finlay's adventures, vividly recounted, make enthralling reading ... This book is equally an inspiration and an education' - Bel Mooney, Daily Mail

In Fabric, bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and asking how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it and made symbols out of it. And sometimes why they have fought for it.

She beats the inner bark of trees into cloth in Papua New Guinea, fails to handspin cotton in Guatemala, visits tweed weavers at their homes in Harris, and has lessons in patchwork-making in Gee's Bend, Alabama - where in the 1930s, deprived of almost everything they owned, a community of women turned quilting into an art form.

She began her research just after the deaths of both her parents - and entwined in the threads she found her personal story too. The book became her journey through grief and recovery. It is her own patchwork.