Strange Material: Storytelling through Textiles

About this book

Strange Material explores the relationship between handmade textiles and storytelling. Through text the act of weaving a tale or dropping a thread takes on new meaning for those who previously have seen textilesquilts blankets articles of clothing and moreonly as functional objects. This book showcases crafters who take storytelling off the page and into the mediums of batik stitching dyeing fabric painting knitting crochet and weaving creating objects that bear their messages proudly from personal memoir and cultural fables to pictorial histories and wearable fictions. Full-color throughout the book includes chapters on various aspects of textile storytelling from "Textiles of Protest Politics and Power" to "The Fabric of Remembrance"; it also includes specific projects such as the well-known and profoundly moving Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt as well as poetry mittens button blankets and stitched travel diaries. Offbeat poetic and subversive Strange Material will inspire readers to re-imagine the possibilities of creating through needle and fabric. Leanne Prain is the co-author (with Mandy Moore) of Yarn Bombing now in its third printing and the author of Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery. A professional graphic designer Leanne holds degrees in creative writing art history and publishing.