Butterfly in Sustainable Embroidery

Explore sustainability in contemporary hand embroidery with this special Fragile Threads course at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, combining the beauty of the natural world with a thoughtful approach to the materials used to represent it.

Inspired by the delicate structure and colouring of a butterfly, you will create a contemporary embroidered design using natural materials throughout. Worked in a beautiful palette of soft blues, aquas and natural tones, the design explores how different threads, fibres and materials can be combined to create intricate detail, texture and movement across the wings.

You will explore a range of surface embroidery techniques, using changes in stitch, colour and texture to capture the transparency and structure of the butterfly’s wings. Natural materials are also incorporated into the surrounding botanical details, creating a connection between the subject of the embroidery and the materials used to stitch it.

As part of the Fragile Threads collection, this course considers sustainability not only through its subject matter but through embroidery practice itself, encouraging you to explore how material choices can become part of the story behind a piece of embroidery.

About Fragile Threads

Fragile Threads is a pioneering project from the Royal School of Needlework (RSN), exploring how embroidery can be used to engage with some of the most important issues facing our world today.

The project reconnects the historic practice of embroidery with contemporary conversations, bringing together artists, embroiderers, designers, communities and partner organisations to explore how making can encourage reflection, connection and positive change.

The current focus of Fragile Threads is biodiversity and our relationship with the natural world. Through embroidery, the project explores the beauty, complexity and fragility of the ecosystems around us, translating conversations around biodiversity and species loss into creative experiences that feel personal, tangible and hopeful.

Working with organisations and communities from grassroots groups to major cultural and environmental partners, Fragile Threads combines heritage, contemporary practice, education and collaboration. At its heart is the idea that embroidery can do more than decorate: it can tell stories, preserve experiences, connect people and provide a powerful way of responding to the world around us.

The project will culminate in Nature’s Fragile Threads, a major exhibition at Bankside Gallery in London from 23 February to 7 March 2027. The exhibition will bring together historic works and designs from the RSN Collection and Archive with contemporary embroidery from within and beyond the RSN community, exploring how nature has inspired embroiderers across generations and how stitch can bear witness to biodiversity and species loss.

Fragile Threads is made possible with support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Royal School of Needlework Fragile Threads Courses

As part of Fragile Threads, the Royal School of Needlework has created a special collection of five Short Courses exploring biodiversity, the natural world and our relationship with nature through hand embroidery.

The collection includes two online courses and three special in-person courses hosted at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Inspired by the themes of Fragile Threads, participants will explore colour, texture and three-dimensional embroidery techniques while taking inspiration from the extraordinary diversity of the natural world.

Through these creative experiences, participants will discover how embroidery can encourage closer observation of nature and provide a powerful way to celebrate its beauty, complexity and fragility.