On the Way | Yi Embroidery Meets Football

We came to visit Ding Lanying in her studio — a recognized master of Yi embroidery and an inheritor of China’s intangible cultural heritage.

The conversation moved slowly — threads, patterns, the way memory is held in the hand. Then, placed quietly to one side, was something unexpected: a football.

Not printed, not painted — but stitched into the surface.

It was part of a project by the National Football League, created for the Year of the Horse.
An object from one world, met by a language from another.

On her phone, we saw images of embroiderers bent over their work — stitching into the surface of the football.

The needle moving through leather,again and again. It is a material that can be embroidered — but not easily. It demands precision, control, and time. And more than that — years of practice, quietly accumulated.

What we saw was not only technique, but persistence.

In that moment, something shifted.

Embroidery, often understood within its own context — garments, ceremonies, tradition—
suddenly extended beyond it. Not as decoration, but as a way of seeing.

It made us reconsider what these materials can do. Not only where they come from, but where they might go. A piece of cloth, a thread, a technique passed down quietly — can enter entirely different worlds, and still remain itself.

Perhaps craft does not belong to a single field. It moves. It adapts. It finds new forms. Sometimes, in places you do not expect.

（Photo credit to NFL）