Inside Material Grrrlz: The Queer Femme Community Celebrating The Artistry Of Craft
Alexa Kari is living her dream in London. Two years ago, she moved from Minnesota, US with her partner to try something new. Craving community, she founded Material Grrrlz, a fibre and textile art community for lovers of knitting, crochet, sewing, embroidery and all things crafting. Alongside hosting workshops and events, Material Grrrlz releases a free quarterly zine and runs a 1,600-member group chat on Discord for crafters around the world to interact and share ideas.
Designed as a space for women, girls, non-binary and genderqueer people, many of Material Grrrlz’s offerings are free or low cost. The result: a joyful, accessible, creative community that defies stereotypes. Material Grrrlz is also a political statement in itself, proudly subverting gendered roles and patriarchal expectations. As Kari explains, it’s somewhere you can fully embrace the supposed cliches of girliness without feeling judged by the male gaze, or those who claim a liking for pink is disloyal to the feminist cause. “It’s a place where girlhood is taken really seriously – there’s no condescension for making a hot-pink project,” Kari says.
It’s not just aesthetic choices that can subvert gendered expectations, but the making itself. “It’s very clear that craft takes so much skill, dedication and artistry, yet you still get so many people – especially men – who belittle the art,” Kari says. This same belittling has made its way into the wider art world, too. “Crafting isn’t funded the same way [as fine art]; people don’t get the same opportunities to sell their work and be supported from their work. It’s not as respected in those creative spaces,” Kari explains.
It’s the work of marginalised women which is often most significantly demoted in the eyes of global capitalism. Indigenous communities have long preserved handcrafting as a means of connecting with the natural world. For example, Kogi women in Colombia weave constantly – as they walk, watch over their children, rest. The weaving is a process of solidifying thought into something physical and acts as an ongoing connection to nature. There is also a rich history of crafting across the African, Asia and the Caribbean. Kuba cloth, made of raffia woven together by women for centuries in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has long been a signifier of social status. In Bengal, women in rural communities have been making kantha cloth since before 1500 BC by stitching together patchwork cloth from rags. It is then turned into satchels, floor covers or coverings for the Qur’an.
But with global industrialisation, many Black and Brown women are now pulled away from their cultural crafting and towards garment making for the fashion industry, which now produces around 100 billion garments per year. In countries such as Cambodia and Bangladesh, up to 90% of garment makers are women. Many are exploited, paid well below a living wage, forced to work intense hours in unsafe conditions and face discrimination and violence. Indigenous communities have been so targeted by colonial forces that many of their longstanding traditions and cultural practices have almost been wiped out.
Part of what Kari hopes to encourage with Material Grrrlz is a reconnection to the worn item. Making a garment allows for an understanding of the sheer amount of skill, time and dedication that goes into each piece. Through this, we can better understand not just the work of garment makers around the world, but also detach crafting from its profit-making configuration and enjoy creation for creation’s sake. Many find crafting beneficial for wellbeing, helping to develop new skills and giving a sense of accomplishment. “I love getting to see women and girls choose to make the things they want, and to reflect their creativity and beliefs,” says Kari.
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Material Grrrlz also encourages freedom of expression, which Kari believes is particularly important for queer people like herself. “Queer expression has been so policed throughout history, and when you learn how to make your own clothes, you get the opportunity to make things exactly how you want to wear them, and decide when and where you want to share them,” Kari says.
In this sharing lies crafting’s radical capabilities. Often, people come along to a Material Grrrlz workshop to create something for a loved one. “They make things because they love to make things, and they want to share them with the people around them… [it’s] a way that they care for their community. That in itself is political – they don’t get paid for this work, but [they] do it for love. It’s very anti-capitalist, very beautiful,” she says.
Molly Lipson is a freelance writer, editor and filmmaker based in London. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Vice
