Crafting Community

This book explores the threads between community building and fiber arts. Essays explore a variety of communities, different types of crafts, and the unique spaces and places where those communities exist. Readers will get a sense of how community is established, supported, and deconstructed to better understand the benefits they hold for community members. Thinking about how the communities work and why members join and stay within them offers the reader a rich view into the world of fiber arts and the communities within.

Amy M. Smith is a media and communication professor at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts.

Edited by Amy M. Smith
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 232
Bibliographic Info: 25 photos (11 in color), notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6285-5
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5138-5
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1
Pattern Notes and Abbreviations: An Introduction
Amy M. Smith 7
Casting On: Creating Community
Stitchin Physicians
April Smith-Gonzalez 35
Finding Social Support Through Knitting Communities
Kim M. Omachinski 37
Crafting Motherhood in Online Communities
Anna Hensley and Libby Anthony 49
Community and Belonging: Knit2Together
Amy M. Smith 67
Between pages 92 and 93 are 8 color plates with 11 photographs
The Pattern: Techniques and Skills
A Knitter’s Perspective
Anne Schuldiner Patterson 95
Why (NOT) Handwork
Jelena Škulis 97
Reconstructing the Personal Self, Constructing a Professional Identity, Building a Community: Rhetorical Dimensions of ­Quilt-making
Elizabeth Jean Nelson 123
Embroidery in Process: Of Threads, Ideas and Feelings
Berenice Cortés Campos 142
Casting Off: Weaving in the Ends
Designing for the Makers
Jill Thompson Beach 159
Weaving an Online Community
Kelli Cargile Cook and Liz Gipson 160
Weaving a Meaningful Place: A Participatory Evaluation of a Rural Community Center in Southern Ecuador
Majo Carrasco-Tenezaca, Grupo Artesanal “Los Ceibos, manos que crean,” Risa Whitson, and Mario J. Grijalva 175
Mind the Step: How An Eclectic Craft Store Creates Community, Engagement, and Belonging in a ­Semi-Rural Area of Western Australia
Jennifer Joy Murphy and Sian Chapman 195
Saving Myself
Marti J. Dahlquist 211
References 213
About the Contributors 223
Index 227