Knitting and Activism: A Brief (Fascinating) History

Knitting is often seen as a quiet domestic art. The public tends to picture an old woman quietly clicking away with her needles. It’s solitary, it’s homey, and it’s hard for even regular knitters to express how exciting and rewarding the craft can be. So how have knitting and activism become in any way associated?

The huge boom of knitting and crocheting for activism in the past couple of years opens up a discussion of the craft’s fascinating history. Fiber arts have created a way for women to get involved in political and social movements.

Pink Pussy Hats & Blue Waves

I was contacted in January with the request that I knit a bunch of Blue Wave 2018 hats for the Women’s March that year. The hat, designed by the great Donna Druchanas, became a popular successor to the “pussy hats” that had dominated the scene in 2017.

I knit six (6!) of the Blue Wave hats in one week so they’d be done in time for the march. It was crazy and I had hand cramps for days. But I also became really interested in how people were using knitting and crochet to express their desire for change.

Debates About Hats

Within protest groups, the pussy hats specifically garnered a lot of debate that’s worth heavy consideration and action. Of course, much of the criticism of the pussy hats came from a valid concern about the inclusivity of the movement.

These ideas should be discussed in-depth moving forward and can help make Women’s Marches a stronger, more unifying movement.

There was also plenty of straight-up mocking, however. Derisive news reports and social media users mocked knitting and crochet as an outlet for the Women’s Marches. Critics (albeit from dubious sources) claimed the hats made women looked silly, undignified, or not truly serious about the cause.

Naturally, some of this is just coming from those who already disagree with the need for a political movement. What I’m interested in exploring is: how much of this is coming from derision about the role of knitting and crochet in our society — and ignorance about the kinds of people participating in these crafts?

In reality, the use of fiber arts for political dissent has a long and storied history that allowed women on the fringes to take an active role in revolutions and wars. Taking a step back to explore this history can help us see these hats as a natural extension of protests that have been going on for centuries.

Vive la Révolution (With Knitting)

The fiber arts were a significant outlet for political expression in both the American and French revolutions. Women, largely confined to more domestic roles, still found powerful ways to express their voices through needlework. And honestly, they were out there doing the backbreaking work that let the more famous activists do their thing at all.

In the soon-to-be United States, the Daughters of Liberty gained notoriety in the late 1760s due to the advent of spinning bees. Spinning bees were organized to support boycotts of British goods — a response to the unpopular Townshend Acts of 1767.

Women would gather together and produce the clothing and textiles that allowed early American patriots to continue their protests against British taxation. True to form, while the Sons of Liberty were drinking and rioting, the women were doing the work behind the scenes that supported the cause.

Knitting Needles of Death

Rather than playing the supporting role, women knitters were even wilder during the French Revolution. Female revolutionaries organized a Women’s March on Versailles and later harassed aristocrats on the streets. The movement evolved into women dubbed tricoteuses knitting patriotic freedom caps while they watched heads roll off the guillotine*. That’s right — knitters weren’t domestic recluses, but symbols of bloodshed and death.

The red “Liberty Caps” the women produced became symbols of the revolution moving forward, providing a historical example of the power of a garish knit activist hat.

*historical legitimacy of this is currently under debate, unfortunately.

Knitting in Social Movements

In the mid-to-late 1800s, knitting communities became ways for women to get involved in abolition and the temperance movement. Those recreational knitting circles and sewing bees become more than an outlet for some bored housewives — they allowed for conversation and social organization.

PBS notes that women were either knitting goods to sell for the cause or sewing bold political messages on the products. These handcrafted items were used to help fund or simply raise awareness for these movements.

There was a significant racial and class divide, however; wealthier white women could knit and crochet for charity, while lower-class or black women relied on the craft as a means for financial support. 

Still, there were places for disenfranchised crafters in social movements. Sojourner Truth broke away from the class divide of crafting and taught fiber arts to emancipated slaves to help them support themselves.

Knitting circles were more than a quick gossip session. They were an opportunity for women to share ideas and get involved in social movements. Importantly, they allowed hesitant women to become more active without sacrificing their comfort with traditional gender roles and behaviors.

Meanwhile, for lower class and oppressed women, they became a means of financial independence that was especially hard to achieve.

This is a crucial and powerful point. Knitting opened the door for women to step outside of the confines of domesticity and start using their tools for larger purposes.

And, later on, it also helped some women work as spies.

Wait, Knitting And Espionage?

You heard me. There is some historical merit to the idea of crafting playing a role in espionage during the World Wars. If the FBI is looking for a modern day knitting spy, you can head to my contact page here. Or, you know what, just call me — I’m sure you have my number.

There’s some awesome research about the uses of knitting patterns for carrying secret codes. Knitters know that there are two stitches, the knit and the purl. This makes for a pretty ease code, as it turns out. Atlas Obscura reports:

By making a specific combination of knits and purls in a predetermined pattern, spies could pass on a custom piece of fabric and read the secret message, buried in the innocent warmth of a scarf or hat.

There were also some pretty out-there reports made during WWII about knitting codes that were probably a little exaggerated. But nonetheless, knitting can create the perfect ruse for a quiet eavesdropper. Who would suspect the nice lady with her domestic arts of being a super spy?

Current Knitting Causes

Moving into our current day, women have not stopped using crafting to create both a community space and a statement of resistance.

One of the most notable examples of this stems from activism in response to the deadly police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri. CheyOnna Sewell founded The Yarn Mission in 2014, which created an activist fiber arts group that regularly meets to discuss and act against racism and police brutality.

The Yarn Mission both carries on the history of knitting circles as a means of political organization and breaks from it; supporting black movements and black artists, the group puts fiber arts in the hands of those traditionally left out from the social aspects of the craft.

The connective tissue is clear. Knitting and crochet are hardly a domestic craft resigned to quiet grandmothers — they create a space for political and social movements and often produce symbols of resistance.

Knitting and Activism

While it may seem like the popularity of the pink pussy hats came out of nowhere in 2017, they’re actually part of a long and complex history. Women, no longer formally barred from centers of political discussion, still turn to knitting and crochet as a means of expression and organization.

From Daughters of Liberty to abolitionists to spies, women have launched impactful (if oft-forgotten) movements from something as simple as yarn.

Pink pussy and blue wave hats have made headlines for their flashy statement. But behind the scenes, the newest radical knitters take on deeper causes. Knitting for black liberation? Check. Knitting for feminism? Yes. The knitting organizations of old live on with a fresh vision.