Fiber arts are often described as delicate, domestic, and soft. They’re associated with quiet moments, cozy rooms, and patient hands. And while these descriptions aren’t untrue, they leave something important out: the edge.

For as long as there has been cloth, there have been people using it to speak, survive and defy. The history of textiles is not just a history of beauty, it’s also a history of rebellion.

Fiber arts don’t always raise their voices. But they don’t need to. They persist, quietly. They witness, call out, resist, and remember.

Throughout history, people have turned to thread not just for function or expression, but for resistance and survival. Some stitched in protest, some in mourning. Others embedded codes into cloth—acts of quiet defiance hidden in plain sight.

Knitting and Espionage in Wartime

During both World Wars, knitting was a patriotic act—also, at times, a covert one. Women would knit messages in Morse code, or pretend to knit while observing, secretly tapping messages in Morse code with their foot while others jotted them down.

In Belgium, women reportedly sat by rail lines and knitted coded messages into scarves to track German troop movements, dropping or adding stitches to signal patterns.
The British Office of Censorship was so concerned about the potential use of knitting for secret messaging that they banned sending knitting patterns through the mail.
In WWI, suspicion was so high that governments warned against unknown women knitting for soldiers, fearing spies could embed Morse code into garments.

The act of knitting became more than craft—it became cover.

Arpilleras of Chile

Under the brutal Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s, Chilean women began creating arpilleras—small hand-stitched narrative tapestries made from scraps.

They depicted protest marches, soldiers, poverty, and missing family members. Smuggled out of the country in laundry bundles or care packages, they bore witness to the brutality that couldn’t be published in the press.

Chilean arpillera. Photo courtesy of molaa.org.

Labeled “tapestries of defamation” by the Pinochet regime, many arpilleras were seized and destroyed. Their makers stitched in secrecy, signing only with initials to avoid arrest.

Holocaust Survival and Resistance

In Nazi concentration camps, some women were assigned to textile work details—mending, sewing uniforms, even embroidery. Within this forced labor, they still found ways to resist.

In Auschwitz, 25 young Jewish women worked in the Upper Tailoring Studio, a dressmaking salon created to serve the wives of Nazi officers, including Hedwig Höss. Led by Marta Fuchs, a skilled seamstress, these women sewed luxurious garments under the gaze of their captors. Yet even in that unimaginable setting, they supported one another, using their craft and quiet solidarity to not only survive, but to help others by smuggling messages and other items in and out of Auschwitz.

Read more about The Dressmakers of Auschwitz at Lilith.org.

Hmong Story Cloths

Displaced by the Vietnam war, Hmong refugee women began stitching pa ndau, or “flower cloths.” These story cloths recorded scenes of village life, migration, and survival.

Story cloth. View and learn more story cloths at garlandmag.com.

In their stitches were memory, grief, and truth. These visual testimonies helped preserve identity, and told stories that might otherwise be lost across borders or generations.

Civil Disobedience: Taking the Wheel

One of the most iconic examples of fiber as resistance is Gandhi’s spinning wheel movement in India. In the early 20th century, Gandhi encouraged people to reject British-manufactured cloth and instead spin their own yarn on a charkha—a small, hand-powered spinning wheel.

Ghandi and his Charkha wheel. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White

This wasn’t just about economics; it was a deeply symbolic act. To spin thread was to reclaim autonomy, to reject imperial control, and to restore dignity through self-sufficiency. The act of spinning became a daily meditation on freedom, and the charkha itself was so central to the movement that it became featured on the early flag of independent India.

Like many acts of fiber rebellion, it was humble in its tools and profound in its message: power can reside in the smallest, most intentional gestures.

The Bayeux Tapestry

Created in the 11th century, the Bayeux Tapestry depicts the Norman conquest of England. While often viewed as propaganda, as documented over at historycoloredglasses.com, it also demonstrates how narrative power could belong to the needle.

Made by women, it recorded history from a uniquely textile perspective—reminding us that cloth has long been a medium of documentation, not just decoration.

Don’t Forget the Pussyhats

In more recent years, the Pussyhat Project turned knitting needles into megaphones. Pink hats worn by marchers across the globe signaled unity, bodily autonomy, and the reclamation of visibility. What began as a grassroots effort to create a sea of hand-knit protest wear for the 2017 Women’s March quickly grew into an international movement. The project reclaimed both color and craft, using traditionally feminine aesthetics to deliver a pointed political message.

Why Fiber Resists So Well

Cotton, linen, wool and silk may seem unlikely media for rebellion, but that’s part of their power; they move quietly but remain visible.

It’s portable. A scarf, a patch, a bag—all can carry message and meaning.
It’s domestic. What was once considered private, “women’s work,” becomes a subversive public statement.
It’s accessible. Thread is humble. It’s forgiving. It’s available.
It’s personal. One person can tell an entire story with just their hands.

Fiber also invites community—spinning circles, weave-alongs, mending groups. These aren’t just hobbies, they’re networks of knowledge, resilience and care.

My Quiet Acts of Rebellion

I’ve been resisting with thread for a long time, though I didn’t always have a name for it.

We were very poor when I was growing up. I joke that we were so poor my father and I shared a coat one winter, meaning only one of us could go out at a time—a true story. My family ran an upholstery shop out of the basement for a while, and as a young teen I’d sneak downstairs late at night. In the few dark hours my night-owl parents slept and before the newspaper bundle for my morning route hit the porch, I’d dig through discarded scraps of vinyl and floral brocades. I’d stitch them into handbags, alter my hand-me-downs, or sew pillows I could quietly sell. I wasn’t trying to be an artist; I wanted to feel capable in a world that didn’t often offer me that feeling. Those early stitches were a form of self-determination.

Years later, as a single mother and returning student with no extra income, I built my first loom from sticks in the yard. It was a backstrap loom assembled with borrowed yarn and blurry instructions from the internet. (Slightly updated backstrap weaving instructions by the fabulous Laverne Waddington.)

I didn’t wait for the right tools or training, I just began. I needed to see what was possible with what I had. The loom wasn’t pretty, but it worked. It taught me that we don’t have to be resourced or ready or perfect to begin something meaningful, or to make.

Blurry old picture of one of my first backstraps looms in action, this one a super-fancy dowel version.

Still later, when I was pregnant with my daughter and placed on strict bedrest—facing the very real possibility that she might be born far too early—I turned to knitting. I felt like my body had betrayed me. I was frightened and uncertain. But learning a new skill lent me confidence, and the act of knitting offered rhythm. Each knit or purl stitch was a deliberate tether to hope, a way to reestablish trust in my own body, and an intention to bring something beautiful into the world despite the fear.

And I did. She was born full term. I remain an avid knitter.

Learning to knit while on bed rest. Squeaks was my constant companion.

These weren’t grand gestures of political or historical importance, but they mattered. They were moments when I chose making over waiting. They were small revolutions that helped me claim time, agency, and much-needed meaning.

Soft Work, Sharp Message

Fiber arts are a long, continuous thread of meaning that connects us to the makers who came before us—those who stitched in protest, stitched in grief or fear, stitched in survival. We may very well be those makers. Or we may teach the next generation of quiet rebels. And so the thread continues.

Whether you’re sewing a protest patch or weaving a vibrant wall hanging, whether you’re just learning to cast on or mending a well-worn sleeve, you are participating in something deeper than craft. You are continuing a tradition of making that has always included care and courage in equal measure.

And in today’s world—where speed is king, and making by hand is often dismissed as a luxury—choosing fiber arts is already a form of rebellion. It’s a decision to stay close to process, to value slowness, and to care about what you create.

So pick up the thread, even if your hands shake. Disrupt the status quo. Begin again, even if you’ve had to begin before. You are not alone.

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If you’re in the Philadelphia, PA area and need guidance to start or rekindle your creative journey, contact me and let’s work together.

I believe in slow craft, real connection, and thoughtful conversation. If something in this post sparked a question or memory, reach out—I’d truly love to hear from you. -Karri

The Radical Stitch: Fiber Arts as Resistance