A Stitch in Time uses ‘data embroidery’ to display historical life courses of 19th century female convicts.

The data comes from the convict records of Van Diemen’s Land, kept by the British bureaucracy to document various aspects of female convict lives. Every now and then the records reveal a small piece of a woman’s personality, like Elizabeth Elemore cunningly concealing a pipe and a match in her boot, or Anne McKenna laughing at the judge during her trial. These ‘data titbits’ in the records inspired the sketches for the data embroideries, often focusing on acts of resilience or resourcefulness. The data was then integrated in the form of a timeline with the inspiring data points highlighted in colour. Embroidery and needle craft played a significant role in the convict women’s lives, which inspired the use of machine embroidery for the works in this exhibition.