Laura Moseley’s Common Threads Press shines a spotlight on untold craft histories, bringing marginalized voices to the forefront of art and creativity.
When crafts researcher Laura Moseley was approaching the completion of her undergraduate degree in Art History at the University of York, she “felt this strong urge for a kind of vessel to pour my creativity into,” Moseley says. During her studies, which included running the university’s Feminist Society and winning the dissertation prize for her thesis on textile artists Anni Albers and Cecilia Vicuna—she was “always doing crafts along the side,” she says. “All the women in my family have a craft.”
Moseley’s sister, a weaver and a crocheter like their mother, had been making zines since she was a teenager. Zines are small self-published or handmade booklets. “They’re a good kind of affordable, accessible way to share something that you know about or that you want to share with other people,” says Moseley who took up freehand embroidery as her first craft. “So I thought, what if I made some zines about the histories that I’ve been learning about, the histories of women’s craft, of women’s art, and put them into zines.”
And so began Common Threads Press. Founded in 2019 by Moseley, the one liner she uses to describe this growing passion project is a small publisher that specializes in radical histories of crafts and making.
From Zines to Craft Histories
The making part Moseley says indicates “all kinds of creativity that we don’t traditionally see represented in mainstream art history publishing.” The radical part: “we are a publisher that very much doesn’t shy away from the political, from the difficult topics within craft histories,” she says. “We’re very proud of our kind of intentions to publish work that is diverse and international and from perspectives and communities that may otherwise not be published.”
The first zine made under Common Threads was on painter, Artemesia Gentileschi. “I quickly realized that my heart was in craft histories,” says Moseley, who initially began the venture through Etsy. That’s when Moseley came into contact with writer and art historian Jess Bailey, who runs the now widely popular Instagram account Public Library Quilts, an arts education project. Both Common Threads and PLQ’s Instagram accounts were in their infancy at that stage.
“I loved her posts on quilt histories,” says Moseley. “I sent her a DM and said, we would love to publish anything that you wrote about quilt history”
Many Hands Make a Quilt: Short Histories of Radical Quilting, now in its second edition, is described as a vital and tender record of the quilts that shaped history—and the hands that stitched them, including Faith Ringhold and the Navajo Quilting Project. “I think craft history is such a crucial way to explore all the kind of histories of marginalized groups that haven’t been in art history traditionally for, you know, hundreds of years,” Moseley notes.
With titles like “Many Hands Make a Quilt” and “Stitching the Intifada,” Moseley is committed to amplifying the creative voices and histories that often go untold in mainstream art narratives.
This first Common Threads craft zine holds a special place in Moseley’s heart because it sent her down her own quilting path. “I started quilting, and ever since it has become this intense passion of mine,” she enthuses. “It kind of changed my life.”
Published earlier this year, Mauka to Makai: Hawaiian Quilts and the Ecology of the Islands, is another title that is near and dear to Moseley. The book, which explores the relationship between Hawaiian quilts, post-colonialism and ecological disaster through the Poakalani quilting group, was Common Threads first exhibition book. Moseley was approached by the University of Oxford’s Pitts River Museum which was set to do an exhibition on Hawaiian quilts. “It opened up a whole other world of quilting to me,” she says. “It was just an honor to be asked to publish these histories.”
By day the assistant curator at the University of Cambridge’s Women’s Art Collection, Moseley runs Common Threads out of her one-bedroom flat, alongside her partner, graphic designer Chris Shortt. “He designs all the books and helps me pack all the orders,” says Moseley, who is the main editor. They also have a small team of volunteers who help with editing and running their events. “It’s really nice to have that slightly extended network of people who want to help,” she says.
Those events, held both online and offline, include book launches, book fairs, craft conversations with various craft book authors, and craft get-togethers like the recent, Sew and Tell.
“We were all strangers from across the world in a Zoom together, connecting over our craft. And it was really, really beautiful,” Moseley says.
A strong sense of community is at the heart of Common Threads. During Covid in 2020, Common Threads’ second year, being forced to work mainly online proved to be an opportunity.
A Global Community of Craft Enthusiasts
“I found myself furloughed with a lot of time to kind of build the business up and meet lots of people also interested in craft,” Moseley says. “Because of Covid, the advantage was that we were able to connect to a really international audience by doing a lot of our events online.” Over 50% of Common Threads’ customers from their online shop are outside of the UK, Moseley says. “We have stockists, customers and followers as far as Australia, Canada, all across Europe, and in particular, North America which is the second most popular place for us to get orders.” While Common Threads does more and more in person events, their online events are a way for the team to stay engaged with their coveted international community.
From zines to exhibitions, Moseley’s small press has reached a global audience, exploring craft traditions that are as diverse as they are radical.
“One thing that I’m sure a lot of other craft businesses feel as well is building that community of people is so important. If we were somehow stripped of our online community, we would really struggle, because we have people kind of flying our flag in their sewing bee, or in their knitting group. I’m so grateful for that community.”
Moseley, who says that they do very little marketing other than social media, mainly uses Instagram to spread the word about Common Threads and its new titles.
“The base of everything we do is actually through Instagram. I’ve built that platform over the last five and a half years, and we have people who buy every single publication, who have followed us for years and keep up with what we do. It’s really, really special, “she says. “And all of our publications are launched via Instagram and that’s how all of our authors have found out about us.”
Moseley notes that they also have a “wonderful distributor” who has helped them to get the books in museum shops and bookshops around the world. “We have a stockist in Japan,” she points out.
Common Threads pays their author royalties, but is also really proud of their fundraising efforts.
“It’s quite interesting to think that a small press based in a flat can raise thousands of pounds for a charity just through small booklets about craft,” Moseley says.
Common Threads’ latest title, Stitching the Intifada: Embroidery and Resistance in Palestine, will donate proceeds from the book to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Even before the idea for the book was conceived, Common Threads raised one thousand British Pounds through an online talk by the author—curator, writer and art historian Rachel Dedman, who Common Threads approached following her successful UK exhibition Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery. “We had over 250 people sign up for this online event in March,” says Moseley. “We knew that our audience was interested in this history, and because the exhibition was in the UK, that people who weren’t based there really wanted to find out more about it. So we said to Rachel, ‘how about we turn the online talk you did for us into a small publication.’”
While the current challenge for Common Threads is deciding how to scale the business for longterm sustainability, “we’re kind of almost at this, like, slight tipping point where we’ve slightly outgrown our existing operation and we need to slightly upgrade our facilities and our methods,” she says, Moseley’s hopes for Common Threads are clear.
“I just hope that we can build a kind of archive, a big, repository of published works and research about histories of craft and that we can be kind of a central home to these histories,” she says, “And that I can look back and think, we have a whole library of really interesting books about craft that hopefully people can find inspiration in, find a home in, you know, see themselves in these histories that may otherwise be kind of retained to memory.” She ends, “It’s basically just to hopefully keep doing what we’re doing.”
