Weekend Review: Crafting a Better World

Crafting a Better World / Diana Weymar
NY: Harvest, c2024.
167 p.

Another book about craftivism, this is one that I was looking forward to, as soon as I saw it in my library's catalogue. It's a little book, about the size of a paperback although it's hardcover, with a cute cover, too. 

It's written by Diana Weymar, creator of the Tiny Pricks Project using embroidery to make a political statement after the 2016 election. And so this book is US-centric, both in the crafters included and the political references. There are interesting stories with a few from around the world as well, but to me it read very American. 

It features some of the usual suspects, like the Pink Pussyhat project, with a brief description of the project and sometimes an interview of sorts, in which those involved answered a few questions put to them by Weymar. Some of the people included really didn't answer many of the questions, though, and those are very short highlights indeed. There is a focus on the people who Weymar knows, also, and some of the 'craft' that is highlighted isn't what I had expected from the use of the word 'craftivism' which generally indicates fibre arts in some form (and the cover images too). There was a story about a woman making and selling chocolate vulvas, which, I guess. And some famous people were included, like Jamie Lee Curtis, with a short profile. 

The book is a series of profiles of 25 crafters, artists or just activists who the author finds inspiring and wants to share. Some of them don't have much connection to traditional craft at all. The plus is that you can then search out anyone who seems interesting and find out more about them online. And there were LGBTQ+ and people of colour profiled, too, which was nice to have included. 

I did find the small size a bit off-putting, making this book harder to read. And I suppose it just wasn't quite what I was expecting - I was hoping for some conversation about craftivism, aka slow activism, as discussed by people like Sarah Corbett - maybe even a few ideas for projects. But this book isn't that. There aren't projects in it, except for the mention of the ones spurred on by the personalities profiled here. So as a record of activism, this is fine, but if you are looking for more in-depth discussion or inspiration for actual craftivism, I'd say try another title. I think the "DIY Projects" from the subtitle got lost somewhere in the mix. Get this one from the library if you can, so that you can skim through and see if it's the book for you. 

Weekend Review: A Little Book of Craftivism

 

A Little Book of Craftivism / Sarah Corbett
London: Cicada, c2013. 
63 p.

As the world continues on its troublesome way, I think more and more about ways for introverts or busy people or overwhelmed people to continue to participate in civil life, and to have their voices heard. One way that has always appealed to me is craftivism, the melding of craft work with activism. It's slow activism, a way for people to engage deeply, and in a long-term way, with social causes, according to Sarah Corbett, founder of the Craftivist Collective. 

I picked up this book recently, being a big fan of Sarah Corbett and her Craftivist activities. It's exactly what it says it is: a little book, about 4x6, full of photos and explanations of various projects the Craftivist Collective has undertaken (up to the 2013 pub date, anyhow). If you want updates and new things, do check out the website as well. 

This book is charming to look through, and it's an easier reference than old blog posts, too. It shares 9 different projects (including my long-time favourite, the I'm A Piece art project); tips on how to take care of yourself as a craftivist and run activities successfully, instructions on learning to cross-stitch and backstitch, and ideas on words and phrases you might like to use in your own projects. 

It's small but a delightful inspiration, and a good introduction to the world of craftivism. Many of the projects are based in embroidery, as this slow process fits in with Corbett's craft+social action+self-awareness ethos. For anyone new to the idea of craftivism, this is a good intro, not overwhelming but visually appealing, and with enough info to get a reader started in this area. 

You can also find more info on the Craftivist Collective on youtube and on IG. 

Weekend Review: Quilt Out Loud

Quilt Out Loud / Thomas Knauer
Concord, CA: C&T, c2023
144 p.

I read this one via my library, and found it very interesting! The subtitle says it all:  "Activism, Language and the Art of Quilting". It really does live up to that billing, combining all three effectively. 

I read it as part of my investigations of using text on quilts, and this one has some ideas that I really liked. Knauer is a quilter who has exhibited many of his social commentary quilts, and he talks about activism and the quilting world, alongside presenting quilts and techniques to incorporate text (or other forms of semantic meaning) into quilt projects. 

There are only so many ways one can do this, and because I've read so many of these kinds of books, I've seen many of these techniques before. But I appreciated the layout, photos and all the context he gives for the specific quilts here. Not only techniques, but the "why" of his projects is given, and I found that inspiring beyond just the practical. Many of these examples are serious, commenting on gun violence, racism, misogyny and more. But there are also lighter, whimsical quilts, as with the one he made for his wife with their wedding vows in code. 

There are instructional elements to this book featuring applique, quilted text, piecing, even using Morse code and binary code. But there is also a lot to read, not just simple how-to's. There are essays included by other quilters who have been quilting in a combination of text and activism for a long time, like Chawne Kimber or Denyse Schmidt, and these elements add to the book. It's a nice balance of voices, and a deep dig into how domestic arts (here specifically quilting) can be used in activist ways. I really liked this one, and will definitely look at it again in future. 

Amnesty International Day of Action

All photos ©Anne Carbert 

I usually post on Tuesdays, but today is the Amnesty Day of Action for Berta Caceres & Earth Defenders in Honduras. So I am sharing this today. 

As Amnesty notes:

 "March 2 marks four years since iconic Lenca Indigenous water defender Berta Cáceres was gunned down in Honduras. Bringing to justice everyone responsible for the killing of Berta is vitally important to end the impunity that fuels more killings of forest and water defenders."

You can find out more about this case, and sign an e-action over at the Amnesty Canada site, or find the case on an Amnesty site for your own country if you don't live in Canada.

I got involved in this project thanks to a friend in our local Amnesty group, who wanted to participate in Amnesty's "Art Build", a craftivist project to gently draw attention to this issue through art & craft. We decided to make a banner: this will be displayed at local events and then go on to Amnesty for their use.

We decided to use felt as it is affordable, easy to work with, and lightweight to pack and to carry or display. I took on the lettering and image of Berta, and the other artist took on the job of making stencils and painting the greenery as well as making spirals, a traditional motif in Lenca art.

Then we had two community sew in days in which many people attached the various pieces with stitching or painting, wrote messages on blue ribbons, and stitched them on to form a river. More ribbons will be added at each community event when passersby will be invited to add their own messages as well.

It's very satisfying to use my craft skills to help others. This kind of community art project invites conversation and discussion, and allows people to have time to consider the issue. If you are intrigued, I invite you to check out your own local Amnesty groups and see if they have any art builds planned that you can help with too.

World Water Day!

Did you know that March 22 is World Water Day? It's a UN led initiative, and they have a great page of resources for you to explore on the theme of protecting the universal human right to clean water.

There are stories to read, posters to share, activities to explore, and more. Water is such an important right!

Beyond fair access to water, I'm also concerned about the health of our waterways. Our library co-hosted a talk on plastic pollution recently, and I discovered that the freshwater Great Lakes are just as contaminated as our oceans, though ocean pollution is much more widely discussed. This was depressing! But they also talked about things to do to reduce your plastic waste as individuals, alongside requesting governmental and corporate change, of course, which was much less depressing.

One of the art projects I'm currently working on is based on a water theme. Looking at the vast amount of plastic pollution in our oceans, I discovered that all species are affected, from marine vegetation all the way up to whales and dolphins. So I chose a handful of particularly at risk species and started a project.

I've started embroidering from the bottom up, starting with red coral. Plastics do a lot of damage: they can smother coral reefs and encourage the growth of damaging algae, limiting the growth of new coral and killing the old.

This is the first panel, to be followed by a Loggerhead turtle, and then a couple of more species, and will be hung as one long piece. It's slow work -- I take the blue filmy plastic bags that newspapers come in, iron them into fused sheets (6-8 layers between large sheets of blank newsprint or parchment paper, ironed evenly at about a rayon setting until they are the amount of fused that you like. Wait til it has cooled down to try to peel the paper off). Then I stitch through the plastic. It's actually quite easy but does take a bit of time, so I have no anticipated end date for this project!

Museums & Craft Shows & Thrift Stores, Oh my

I was lucky enough to get into the Big City a couple of times recently for some exciting crafty adventures. Living large... :)

My first trip was to Toronto's Textile Museum. This was a small, easily visited museum in the short time I had to pop over to it after meetings all day. I was most intrigued by the Eutopia exhibit. Unlike a utopia, a eutopia is an ideal but achievable future: the textiles shown were often activist projects or community building ones.

It was so interesting to see textiles used as activist material - craftivism is something I am very, very fascinated by so this was a great show to see. There was a neat interactive bit in which museum goers were invited to fill out a postcard stating their own ideal of eutopia. It looked like cross-stitch but is just a printed card; I like it.

One real highlight for me is that I got to see a real-life painting by Christi Belcourt in this exhibit. She's a wonderful Métis artist whom I recently found as a result of her collaboration with Valentino for their Resort 2016 line. I just love her work, which is inspired by the beadwork and culture of her Métis heritage. (if you are interested in this kind of beadwork, she's also written a book on the subject).   I recommend visiting this museum - they have a wonderful gift shop as well.

The next big adventure that I had came thanks to friends who were attending the Creativ Festival in Mississauga and invited me to join them. Thank goodness it just happened to be my day off. I spent a day at this fun event, becoming saturated with colour and fabric and IDEAS! No, I don't need to take on one more crafting habit, but it sure is hard to say no to some of the wonderful things I saw.

I ended up focusing on my latest obsession, and this was the result:

I picked up one or two items at many of the booths I visited and now have a lot of new-to-me threads to experiment with. I was particularly thrilled at the wide choices in cotton perle, and the discovery of some glow-in-the-dark thread! Fun times.

The Creativ Festival also has free sessions you can attend throughout the day, and I was so pleased to meet Sherri of Thread Riding Hood, who was doing one of the presentations. If you haven't visited her blog, you've got to check it out. Tons of fun tutorials and great posts too.

One of the things I was excited about was meeting Maria Rypan of Rypan Designs. She's a Ukrainian beading expert who I've followed online for a long time, despite the fact that I don't do beading (my dad does a lot of it, though). I've always been impressed by her Ukrainian patterns and it was a real honour to meet her and chat with her for 15 minutes about her beading and about Ukraine. I was thrilled to meet her; she's like a beading rock star to little old Ukrainian Canadian me!

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And then closer to home this week, I picked up this interesting little bundle at a local thrift store for only $2. It was folded into a small bag, with a tangle of threads on one side. When I opened it up, I was very pleased.

I think I'll finish it. Though I don't have a long dresser to lay it on, I'll find a way to use it. And not only does it come with all the remaining threads to finish the pattern, for some reason, there are 2 cards of ecru floche tucked in as well, one holding the needles that this embroiderer was using to work on this project. Love this.

And speaking of embroidery, I've been neglecting my big project which I started months ago - but finally have made some progress on it. Here's where I am now:

What creative adventures have you taken lately? Share any links or stories in the comments!

Text Talk Two

I've been quite busily working on some Christmas projects (and slipping one little one in for me) over the last while, besides coming down with a nasty cold that has made me a little too tired to take on any big projects in the evenings. So no new sewing projects to share at the moment, though I'll be sharing a couple of little things later this week.


But what I have been doing is reading: that is pretty much a standard for me, and in recent evenings when I've felt it necessary to get into bed early on, some fascinating books have kept me company. I'm very intrigued by the intersection of textile craft (particularly embroidery) and activism, and have been reading through two collections on the topic.

The first, Craftivism: the art of craft and activism, by Betsy Greer, is kind of the start of this genre. Greer apparently is the source of the term, and in this book she highlights many different groups of crafty people who use their craft to social ends. Some are knitters, crocheters, embroiderers, even quilters or mosaic artists. Each has a small essay and some photos of their work, as well as links as to where to find out more. I did find though, that many of the contributors are ephemeral, in the sense that their websites are out of date already, and no longer available. The book is still inspiring, though, and it is lots of fun to ponder other people's clever ideas.

The book also highlights another organization with a wonderful and active website, the Craftivist Collective out of the UK, which has ongoing projects that anyone worldwide can join in on. It's worth a look. The founder, Sarah Corbett, has written a small guide to craftivism, but unfortunately I can not seem to find an available copy here in Canada. Perhaps I'll eventually resort to the Book Depository, once the Canadian dollar isn't at such an abysmal exchange rate ;)

The second read is focused more closely on embroidery. It's called Hoopla: the art of unexpected embroidery, by Leanne Prain, a Canadian writer who has also written books on yarn bombing and storytelling via textiles.  It's a huge, heavy book full of photos and essays - much the same format as Greer's book, but longer. It has a variety of craftivists, some which appealed to my aesthetic and some which really didn't.  But again, it is interesting to see the variety of craft enthusiasts who are using their chosen method to create something unique. This book is not entirely focused on craftivism, rather, it opens up into crafters who are just choosing to pursue their craft as a kind of lifestyle statement as well. Plus a few textile artists who exhibit professionally. It's an intriguing blend, and made me think about what I want to get out of my own sewing and embroidery practice.

I ordered both of these books through my library system to check them out. I usually do this with craft books, in order to see what I need to own for myself. I don't think I'd need either of these in my permanent collection, but they were both very worth reading, and I'm very thankful for my library system's robust interlibrary loan abilities.

And now to the one book that started me off on this craft reading jaunt -- a classic book in this field, which I've owned for years and years -- though I ended up reading the newest edition from 2010. It's Rozsika Parker's The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery & the making of the feminine. It was a great read.

Parker is extremely knowledgeable and a very good writer; the history she shares is very readable, not dully academic. This is a chronological approach, dealing with embroidery from the time of the Bayeux Tapestry up until the 70s (when it was first published). The new edition also has some mention of more current embroidery artists, but just a mention. It's also primarily looking at English history.

Things I found most interesting were the way that embroidery came to be both tied to the feminine in an oppressive manner, while also allowing a space for the subversion of the title. Originally embroidery was not differentiated from the fine arts; it was only in the Renaissance when art and craft began to split that embroidery turned into a feminine, amateur craft. Parker draws the connections between the ways that patriarchal society used embroidery as a way to  define "the feminine", in many different eras.

I was particularly taken with the war of words in the 1600's between men who thought that needlework was beneficial because it kept women silent and still, and the women who replied to them by writing their own public tracts in response, mocking the author. Throughout the book, Parker shares both how women were oppressed by needlecraft, and how they spoke up using the same metier. I was really inspired by this one to follow up with our current resurgence of handicraft and activism. Parker's book is a fascinating, feminist history of this art form, and is a must read in this area.

After I'd read it, I also discovered this amazing podcast series from a conference at Goldsmith University in the UK: The Subversive Stitch Revisited: The Politics of Cloth.  I've been listening to many of these lectures while sewing and embroidering, and enjoying them in their varied subject areas.

Lots of learning going on around here lately. Do you have any must-reads to recommend?