Life Stories shows readers how to create textile art with a palpable sense of story, about ordinary people and everyday life.

This book delves into the three things that most inspire Ali Ferguson as a textile artist—Collected Stuff, Words, and Clothing. Ali shares the stories and thinking processes behind pieces of her work alongside the techniques that she uses, instructions for making projects and a thoughtful curation of related work from other contemporary textile artists working with similar themes.

This beautiful book is fully illustrated with photographs of finished work, processes, and source materials both from Ali’s own creative practice and that of other leading textile artists, to provide a range of inspiration and different points of view.

About The Author

Ali Ferguson is an embroiderer and textile artist who is renowned for her exquisitely beautiful and nostalgic work focused on the home. She works from The Purple Thread Shed, a cozy garden studio that also lends its name to Ali's popular Instagram profile @thepurplethreadshed. She is a member of The Society for Embroidered Work and has written for Textileartist.org. Her first book Cloth Stories was published by Batsford in 2024. She lives in Roslin, Midlothian.