01/06/2026
It’s been a big few weeks in football, and with the Men’s World Cup round the corner, it feels an appropriate time to highlight the artists featured in our current exhibition’s (officially coined) ‘Football Corner’.
For the Love of Textiles showcases loving connections with family members, lovers, neighbours and beloved football teams through a range of contemporary textile art and precious garments.
Image 2 - Dyed in the Wool by Henry/Bragg & WI members
During the 1970s there was little opportunity to buy pre-designed football shirts. Instead fans would wear homemade jerseys or scarves, often painstakingly knitted by a friend or relative. For Dyed in the Wool, Henry/Bragg invited a die-hard football fan from each of the Premiership sides to design a cardigan to represent their team. The response to this request was participative and home made.
What separates these cardigans from the cloned replica shirts of the standard football club merchandisingis a sense of local identity. The colour and the stories behind the cardigans, knitted by the Women’s Institute for the fans, bring out the narrative tradition; the novelist as opposed to the historian with only dry statistics.
Dyed in the Wool was commissioned by The Millais Gallery supported by Arts Council England in 2004 and has since toured to Berlin, Belgium, London and New York. It is now in the permanent collection at the National Football Museum in Manchester.
Image 3 & 4 - Lionesses Touchline Coat by Jacqui McAssey, Paul Robinson & Wildemasche
The Lionesses Touchline Coat draws on the cultural energy of football terraces, particularly chants, songs and clothing that hold collective meaning by reclaiming and feminising them to centre female
supporters’ experiences.
The garment, a nod to Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal puffer coat, was commissioned for the England Women’s Squad Announcement film ahead of the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022, a tournament the England team memorably went on to win. It is constructed from layers of used England scarves sourced from online retailer Classic Football Shirts.
The coat has travelled to both the UEFA Women’s EURO in England and the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia in 2023. These encounters were photographed for GIRLFANS England fanzine, published in 2026.
Image 5,6 & 7 - She’s a Keeper & Tethered by Nicole Chui
Nicole’s Chui's technical approach often moves beyond the hoop to challenge the boundaries of the medium. In her piece Tethered, she collaborated with a local maker to develop a custom frame that allowed for a more expansive, structural approach to layered stitching.
This interest in unconventional surfaces is further explored in She’s A Keeper—a centrepiece of her OOF Gallery residency—where she hand-stitched directly into a football. Developed in collaboration with TOMME Studio, the work reimagines the ball as a bag, blending domestic craft with the ruggedness of sport.
These techniques trace back to Nicole’s initial return to football in 2019, when she began hand-embroidering directly onto her goalkeeper gloves. This act of blending her athletic and artistic worlds remains the foundation of her practice: a brash, tactile subversion of sport and tradition through the resistance of the needle.
Find out more about the exhibition here. Open Tuesday to Sunday 10am - 4pm until 28th June > https://www.sunnybankmills.co.uk/arts/gallery/for-the-love-of-textiles/
