Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles (Revised Edition)

Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles (Revised Edition)

An invigorating survey of Black women textile artists, celebrating their vital contributions to cultural and social histories through fibre-related mediums. 

Historically ignored or overlooked in surveys of art history, Black women artists that work in fibre and textiles have often been further neglected – their artworks reduced to hobby or handiwork without proper consideration to their deeper significance. From rug-making and hand-felting to computational textiles, the work of seven contemporary artists offers a remedy. Explored through a series of interviews, Diasporic Threads collates their diverse practice in a potent reminder that anti-Blackness and misogynoir are global issues, contested and resisted at the intersections of race, art, and cultural memory.

Written by Sharbreon Plummer
Edited by Laura Moseley and Chris Shortt
Design by Scarlett Ryan and Chris Shortt, and illustrations/first edition design by Saffa Khan 

Published by Common Threads Press
72 pages
Dimensions: 200 x 140mm
ISBN: 978-1-06862-505-3

About the author

Sharbreon Plummer, PhD is a public scholar, independent curator and artist whose work focuses on Black art history, Southern folkways, textiles and material culture. Dr Plummer has facilitated and presented work at/through institutions such as Project Row Houses, Princeton University, Rhode Island School of Design, Americans for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Archive, and several others. A few of her creative projects include her internationally distributed zine Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles (2022) and the People’s Quilting Bee, co-developed with Dr. Jess Bailey. Her curatorial projects include Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South, Stitching Abolition (Chicago, 2022) and Mirrored Migration (New York, 2017). She has also been featured as an artist-in-residence at Rogers Art Loft (Las Vegas, NV) and Arquetopia (Oaxaca, MX). She was most recently awarded a 2025-26 Crossroads Arts Fellowship through Princeton’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion. Dr Plummer also serves as a staff writer for Quiltfolk and Homecooked Magazines. Her most recent book, Black Quilts: Memory, Method and Medicine, is slated for release in 2026 through Chronicle Books.