Can needlecraft be a narrative tool?

A folk tale is an oral narrative of extraordinary events whose motives are closely linked to the customs and traditions of a people. It hides between the lines beliefs, opinions, norms and values of those who share a common cultural background, and often has a strong symbolic importance for the relevant community. In the past, legends were mainly passed down orally and sometimes represented in pictorial cycles, embroideries, and decorations of everyday objects. In contrast, the first written collections of folk legends date back to the 19th century.

Vinschgau Valley preserves a rich heritage of folk tales thanks to scholars Ignaz V. Zingerle (1825-1892) and Dr. Friedrich Willhelm Mai (1911-1945). Like all legends, those from this alpine valley offer insight into the daily hardships and poverty of much of the local population and their awareness of being at the mercy of nature.

This thesis is an editorial project that collects and reinterprets a selection of these legends. My work has focused on the recurring female figures in these narratives, such as the witch, the wild woman, and the peasant woman. Coming from the Vinschgau Valley myself, I wanted to trace the female cultural patterns of my valley.

The project not only collects these legends but also aims to represent their female protagonists. It does so by resorting to the craft of cross-stitch, a traditional craft technique that is predominantly feminine and widely used in the Vinschgau Valley. I traced, among others, cross-stitch patterns in the possession of my grandmother Maria Theiner, born in 1938 in Langtaufers. These printed materials served as a starting point for the typographic and graphic choices in my work, and it is for this reason that, in the collection of stories resulting from my thesis work, each illustration I made, can also become the iconographic model for a new embroidery.

Through my work, not only folk legends but also cross-stitch have a chance to have a new life, re-enacted and transmitted, today.