The significance of the stitching is placing it at the time of Jesus. But there is an image on the cloth that is seemingly miraculous and that would be the indication it was not used to bury someone else.
Despite the professor's assertion that we could all make our own shrouds of Turin, why hasn't one other example of such an image on a cloth turned up? Why hasn't yon professor done an experiment proving his theory? Until someone demonstrates how the image was transferred and that it is a natural phenomenon they cannot state how it came to be.
Personally I do believe the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Christ. Especially since I learned last year of the head cloth that has been kept in Spain all of these years.
There is no "First Century" proof in the stitching..
I just attended a Shroud symposium where Dr. Alan D. Whanger presented some of the photomicrographs of the stitching in question. The significance of the stitching was the DIFFERENCE between the stitching done on the original shroud material and the stitching done in the 1550s by the Nuns of Poor Claire.
The surprising discovery is that the "side strip" long thought to be a separate piece of linen added centuries after the original weaving of the shroud to "center the image on the cloth" is actually not separate at all!!! In fact, there IS NO SIDE STRIP!!! The "Seam" that was thought to join the "side strip" to the shroud is actually a "PLEAT" with the shroud material folded over itself and then basted down to the shroud. The current theory is that the PLEAT was added in antiquity to strengthen the shroud for hanging for display, and for carrying in parades.
The author of this article is not very versed in the latest Shroud scholarship and has mis-reported the findings.