Record, Map and Capture in Textile Art Data visualization in cloth and stitch

A guide to the increasingly popular trend of transforming data into beautiful textile art.

This stylish and fascinating book from up-and-coming textile art star Jordan Cunliffe shows how raw data, maps and personal experience can be distilled into textile art, producing mesmerising works with deep meaning, whether obvious or hidden, and concentrating on the smaller, quieter moments that make up our lives.

Jordan explores the use of stitched data to tell stories, pinpoint special places on maps, convey secret messages, and record personal detail, for example daily walks or nightly sleep patterns. Her finished work is beautifully precise, including a long strip of fabric containing a stitch for every day of her life, a reimagination of a favourite childhood book in unreadable code, and pleasing beaded representations of secretly important documents.

Almost any aspect of your life can be represented in graph or map form, and here are many practical ways to achieve this, whether it's recording the colours of flowers on a favourite path to create your own unique palette, or encoding your most private thoughts in beaded morse code. This visually stunning book explores a new way of working and will help you explore a fresh new angle in your embroidery and textile work.

Illustrated with a wealth of examples of the author's own work as well as pieces from other data-focused artists from around the world, Record, Map and Capture in Textile Art proves beyond all doubt that data can be beautiful, and can inspire stunning works of stitched art.

Jordan Cunliffe is a textile artist and embroidery designer with a focus on data and storytelling, taking traditional textile techniques and pairing them with contemporary concepts. She is based in Colne, Lancashire and this is her first book.

Jordan Cunliffe is a textile artist and embroidery designer with a focus on data and storytelling, taking traditional textile techniques and pairing them with contemporary concepts. She is based in Colne, Lancashire and this is her first book.

Introduction 6

Materials 10

DIY Project 18

Data Visualization 22

The Bayeux Tapestry 27

Linear Time 28

Sleep 32

Sleeping and Waking 34

I Could Sleep for a Week 36

Overlapping Lives 38

Artist's Work: Laurie Frick 40

Artist's Work: The Tempestry Project 44

Artist's Work: Olivia Johnson 48

Artist's Work: Ahree Lee 50

DIY Projects 52

Steganography 60

Steganography in Wartime 64

22.3.2001: A Binary Beaded Diary 66

Coded Alphabet 70

Artist's Work: Sam Meech 74

Artist's Work: Raw Color 76

Artist's Work: Holly Berry 78

DIY Project 80

Algorithms 84

Ada Lovelace 89

Overlapping Number Series 90

Mapping the Sky 94

Artist's Work: Richard McVetis 98

Artist's Work: Evelin Kasikov 100

Artist's Work: Channing Hansen 104

Artist's Work: Michelle Stephens 106

DIY Projects 108

Conclusion 116

Graph Paper 118

Binary Code Translator 123

Morse Code Translator 124

Contributing Artists 125

Index 126

Acknowledgements 128