Hello and welcome to Making Stitches Podcast! My guest for this episode is the historian and writer, Barbara Burman, whose latest book is 'The Point of the Needle - Why Sewing Matters'. Barbara, a retired academic from the University of Southampton and the University of the Arts, spent more than 40 years teaching and researching the history of dress and textiles. In her latest book, Barbara takes an in-depth look at the social and cultural significance of sewing, drawing on contemporary voices as well as historical research. In it, Barbara asks what people are sewing, why they are motivated to sew and why people choose to mend? This was a fascinating chat, which covered lots of different aspects of Barbara's work - I hope you enjoy l listening to it! You can find a link to 'The Point of the Needle - Why Sewing Matters' here. To join the mailing list for the Making Stitches Newsletter, please click onto this link. For full show notes for this episode, please visit the Making Stitches website. The theme music is Make You Smile by RGMusic from Melody Loops . The Making Stitches logo was designed by Neil Warburton at iamunknown. You can support Making Stitches Podcast with running costs through Ko-fi. Making Stitches  Podcast is supported by the Making Stitches Shop which offers Making Stitches Podcast merchandise for sale as well as Up the Garden Path crochet patterns created by me & illustrated by Emma Jackson. Making Stitches Podcast is presented, recorded and edited by Lindsay Weston.