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It was the winter of 2016, and Shannon Downey and thousands of women like her were mad. Donald Trump had just pulled off a surprise win, beating out Hillary Clinton, who was, in all estimations, going to be the first female president, and there was a lot to be angry about. These women were so upset, in fact, that most nights they sat on their couches and stabbed an inanimate object, over and over and over again.
Meet the stitch n’ bitchers of the modern era.
No longer the territory of the prim ladies of yesteryear showing off their neat stitches in cutesy samplers, the modern Etsy generation has taken up the craft of cross stitching to relieve stress and channel their rage. It’s an act of self-care that doubles as an act of resistance.
In January, Downey, the 39-year-old Chicago resident behind the site Badass Cross-Stitch, got more than 20,000 likes and 8,000 retweets on a photo of her Women’s March protest "sign." The large-scale embroidery included a hoop holding fabric that was hand-stitched to read, "I'm so angry I stitched this just so I could stab something 3,000 times" alongside a triumphant resistance fist proudly clutching a needle thread.
"I use stitching to process, and there is so much to process [in politics]," Downey, who teaches at DePaul and Columbia and works for the Chicago chapter of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, tells Bustle.
https://www.bustle.com/p/how-feminist-cross-stitching-became-a-tool-of-the-resistance-2448280
Meet the stitch n’ bitchers of the modern era.
No longer the territory of the prim ladies of yesteryear showing off their neat stitches in cutesy samplers, the modern Etsy generation has taken up the craft of cross stitching to relieve stress and channel their rage. It’s an act of self-care that doubles as an act of resistance.
In January, Downey, the 39-year-old Chicago resident behind the site Badass Cross-Stitch, got more than 20,000 likes and 8,000 retweets on a photo of her Women’s March protest "sign." The large-scale embroidery included a hoop holding fabric that was hand-stitched to read, "I'm so angry I stitched this just so I could stab something 3,000 times" alongside a triumphant resistance fist proudly clutching a needle thread.
"I use stitching to process, and there is so much to process [in politics]," Downey, who teaches at DePaul and Columbia and works for the Chicago chapter of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, tells Bustle.
https://www.bustle.com/p/how-feminist-cross-stitching-became-a-tool-of-the-resistance-2448280
Can’t stop thinking about this 1830s sampler, embroidered by 17 year old Elizabeth Parker, detailing her abuse by her employers. Needlework was a way of proving one’s ‘feminine’ virtues and accomplishments - she subverted this into an act of resistance #womensart
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