The fabric of life: New exhibition for artwork depicting history of Scotland

Melissa Reilly puts the finishing touches to an exclusive new display of the Great Tapestry of Scotland, which is set to return to New Lanark this summer. The 18th century mill village, one of Scotland’ s six Unesco World Heritage sites, previously held showings of the artwork, but this new exhibition will see the tapestry in residence at the site until July.

The 143 m-l on ga rt work is made up of 160 hand- stitched panels, depicting aspects of the history of Scotland – including the founding of The Scotsman newspaper – and took expert stitchers more than a year to complete, with each panel requiring 500 hours of work.