Rozsika Parker uses household accounts, women’s magazines, letters, novels and the works of art themselves to trace through history how the separation of the craft of embroidery from the fine arts came to be a major force in the marginalisation of women’s work. Beautifully illustrated, her book also discusses the contradictory nature of women’s experience of embroidery: how it has inculcated female subservience while providing an immensely pleasurable source of creativity, forging links between women.