Endangered Textile & Embroidery Crafts in the UK: What the 2025 Red List Reveals

The 2025 edition of the Red List of Endangered Crafts, published by Heritage Crafts, highlights a sobering truth: many traditional textile techniques are vanishing from the UK. While some crafts remain resilient, others — especially those linked to fabric processing, decorative embellishment, and garment construction — are now critically endangered.

As a textile artist and educator, I think it’s time we take a closer look at what’s disappearing.

Critically Endangered Crafts to Know

Quilting in a Frame

This traditional hand-quilting method — using a large wooden frame to create precise rocking stitches — has officially entered the “critically endangered” category in 2025. While quilting is still popular as a hobby, this specific method has no formal training pathways left in the UK.

Why it matters: It’s not just about comforters. Frame quilting offers insight into regional needlework techniques and social histories of textile work — often women-led and domestic, yet commercially significant.

Linen Beetling

Beetling involves pounding damp linen with wooden hammers to produce a high-sheen finish — something that can't be replicated with modern machinery. The last operational engines are over 150 years old, and maintaining them is now a specialist skill in itself.

Why it matters: Beetled linen is still prized for tailoring and interior use. The process blends material science with hands-on heritage.

Flower Making (Trade and Manufacturing)

Artificial flower making — once essential to millinery and fashion — relied on hand-cut fabrics, shaping tools, and wirework. Mass production and synthetic materials have pushed it to the brink.

Why it matters: Many techniques in couture embellishment draw from this craft. Knowing how to make a structured silk petal or wire a stem is still relevant, especially for bespoke work.

And if you’re interested in reviving these skills in a contemporary way, my Textile Rose Choker course teaches you how to create structured roses using natural silk — one of the core materials used in traditional flower making. This is not just embellishment — it’s a continuation of an endangered tradition.

Fabric Pleating

Hand pleating using cardboard moulds was once essential in fashion. Today, the moulds are rare, the knowledge limited, and the alternatives synthetic and flat.

Why it matters: For those working in slow fashion or historical costuming, this method can’t be replaced by heat-set polyester folds.

Silk Ribbon Weaving

Creating narrow, richly coloured ribbons for embellishment and formalwear requires specialist looms and niche know-how. Both are disappearing.

Why it matters: These ribbons were often used in embroidery, accessories, and garment trims. Their quality and structure differ from modern alternatives.

Endangered but Still Practised

These crafts aren’t yet at the brink — but they’re not far off either.

Flax, Hemp, and Nettle Processing

Mechanical scutching and hackling of bast fibres is seeing revival interest, but infrastructure is patchy. Seed supply and local spinning capacity remain obstacles.

Block Printing

While widely associated with India or Japan, the UK has its own traditions of printing on fabric with carved blocks. Few practitioners are keeping it going commercially.

Passementerie

Tassels, fringes, cords — once essential in military and ceremonial garments—are now niche, with few people trained to make them by hand.

Bobbin Lace Making

While still practised as a hobby, bobbin lace has seen a 30% decline in skilled practitioners. It hasn’t enjoyed the modern revival seen with knitting or crochet.

Welsh Double-Cloth Weaving

A historic tradition with regional patterns and British wool. Skills for maintaining old looms and writing pattern chains are fading.

Why This Matters to Us as Textile Practitioners

Whether you’re an embroidery artist, fashion student, or independent maker, these crafts aren’t just historical curiosities — they’re part of our toolkit. Many techniques under threat intersect with embroidery: structured textiles, trims, hand-finishing, and surface embellishment.

I believe knowing what’s disappearing is the first step toward deciding what’s worth learning, preserving, or even reinventing.

If you’ve ever worked with handmade ribbons, touched beetled linen, or admired fine pleating — you’ve already felt the difference. Let's not lose it.

Want to Learn More?

You can explore the full Red List here:
Heritage Crafts Red List 2025

And if you’re interested in embroidery techniques that connect with historical lace-making, it's worth noting that tambour lace — a type of lace created using chain stitch on net — is listed as one of several traditional lace forms. While not officially classified as endangered, this technique is rarely taught today.

My Introduction to Luneville Embroidery course starts with tambour stitching using a hook — offering a solid base for anyone who wants to explore modern applications or even experiment with lace-like designs on mesh.