Collaborative Crafting: Large-Scale Fiber Projects that are Changing the World

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It’s winter in Neolithic Europe. Though only late afternoon, the sun sinks low against the horizon, reminding the local people of the long, dark night ahead. To keep the cold-weather doldrums at bay, families visit in the evening. They talk, they laugh, and they spin yarn.

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Above: Two tempestries with high temperatures from Point Reyes National Seashore. Knitted and photographed by Stephanie Panlasigui.

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For thousands of years, fiber crafts have brought people together, both physically and collaboratively. Today’s reality is a little different; though knitters still rally around a common cause, proximity is no longer a limiting factor. As a result, large scale community craft projects are becoming more common. Knitters around the world are using the internet and their needles to document climate change, tell women’s stories, and even save sheep breeds from extinction.

The National Parks Tempestry Project

On a typical Saturday I log on to my computer to work on the National Parks Tempestry project. On my desk sit two such Tempestries, unfurled like multihued scarves. Tempestries, or temperature tapestries, are knitted or crocheted wall hangings representing temperature data for every day of a given year and location.

Knit by Loren Gmachl, they arrived at my Florida house after being photographed at the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis. In my inbox I trade emails with crafters in California, Massachusetts, Maine, and more all donating their time and effort to use Tempestries to illustrate climate change across the national park system.

About the Tempsetry Project

The Tempestry Project began in 2016 when Emily McNeil, Justin Connelly, and Marissa Connelly hit on an idea to communicate climate change in a whole new way. Their idea was relatively simple: knit temperature data into a fiber project.

The trio told me: “We joked, and then stopped joking, about needing to return to older, more reliable forms of data storage, like cuneiform tablets or ancient tapestries. The Tempestry Project has grown into not simply permanent data storage but rather a conversational bridge between hard data and personal lived experiences.”

Using temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), each row of the Tempestry represents the high temperature on that particular day. The 365 rows of the Tempestry Project, then, are color-coded for an entire year of temperature data, like a colorful, soft graph. The hotter the high temperature, the redder the yarn, extending all the way down to deep blues for the coldest days. With one look, someone can see—or touch—how a landscape experienced the summer or winter months. Knitting two Tempestries, then, allows for easy comparisons across time and space.

Tempestries transport that data from computer screens into a tangible entity, real in a way that abstract numbers sometimes aren’t. For my first project, I chose 2016 in New Hampshire, and the Tempestry Project team sent me a kit of multi-colored wool and a long checklist of high temperatures just waiting to be knit.

Over a series of evenings after work, I settled onto the long brown couch in my living room, placing my list of temperatures on one side, my rainbow yarn balls on the other, until I knit all 365 days.

Collaborative Crafting with National Parks

The next step came to me all at once, a true flash of inspiration, a eureka moment. Why not create a series of Tempestries for America’s most treasured landscapes, our national parks? Why not similarly transport people through time to show them viscerally, visually, tactilely, how these natural treasures changed and will change over time?

Now dozens of Tempestries have been completed for parks across the country. As the pandemic draws to a close, we will continue to work together to photograph and display the knitted pieces together.

Find out more at www.tempestryproject.com. Read more about the how the National Parks Tempestry Project got started in Interweave Knits Summer 2021.

HERstory

The directions for participating in the “HERstory” project are straightforward. Using a 12-inch square, sew, embroider, knit, crochet, or felt your story. That’s it. Create a piece of art that represents you.

When launching HERstory, Shannon Downey realized that many community craft projects were outwardly focused, made for somebody or something. But what of our own stories? “Women are not taught that we are the hero of our own story,” Downey explained. They say instead, “My story is not interesting,” or “I haven’t don’t anything,” or they ask, “Is my story valuable?” Creating a HERstory square shows the crafter and the community at large that individual stories are valuable. Through each creation we know better who we are, and how we can make a positive difference in the world.

The HERstory project collects these small personal representations. Downey displays them both singularly (which she has already done in exhibits and shows) as well as together in three- dimensional installations (which she plans for the future). Since 2019 she has shared the submissions on a regularly updated Instagram feed, @BadassHERstory. Thus far, more than 2,000 people have submitted their fiber stories to Downey.

Erika’s HERstory

I thought about my HERstory square for months. Eventually, I decided that so much of my life has been influenced by Maine, where I grew up, and Florida, where I have spent the past six years. Using knit squares, I sewed together an homage to America’s quilting history—where women have expressed themselves artistically for centuries. I embroidered the outline of each state, a loon and a stork to represent my love of birding, and the needles of pine tree species found in Maine and Florida. Two squares I left blank, because no doubt both states will continue to influence me in ways I have not anticipated. In the center I stitched a simple circle within my knit square: me.

As I wove in the last end, I felt a strong surge of pride not only in my work but also that I could join women across the country and the world in telling our stories.

More about HERstory founder Shannon Downey and the author’s contribution to the collaborative crafting project in Interweave Knits Summer 2021.

Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em

When you’re selecting yarn, what draws you to a skein? Color? Texture? Weight? The spinners and knitters in the Shave ’Em to Save ’Em program are driven by the sheep breed itself.

Gathered together in an active Facebook and Ravelry group, participants in The Livestock Conservancy’s Shave ’Em to Save ’Em program have come together to create a market for rare, heritage-breed sheep at risk of extinction. When we lose a sheep breed, we lose generations of adaptations to a local or regional environment. Not to mention, the unique wool that results from such adaptations.

How Knitters and Spinners Participate

To participate, fiber artists send away for a blue Shave ’Em to Save ’Em “passport,” with spaces for each breed. As the crafters make their way through each breed—they must spin, knit, crochet, or felt four ounces to qualify—they place small stickers on each page, sent from qualified vendors with their purchase. Twenty-three breeds, twenty-three stickers.

I can tell you from personal experience that discovering new yarn through Shave ’Em to Save ‘Em is addicting. Before I began exploring sheep breeds, I never bothered reading the label to discover what kind of yarn I used. Now I pore over The Livestock Conservancy’s website and The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook by Carol Ekarius and Deborah Robson to learn about hair breeds and longwool types and so much more. Walk through the rooms of my house, and you’ll find newly spun Cotswold yarn drying on the deck, dyed Jacob yarn rinsing in my laundry room, and Lincoln Longwool fleece partially knit into a fuzzy vest on the couch.

Find out more about Shave ’Em to Save ’Em at www.livestockconservancy.org. Learn more about what the organization is up to in Interweave Knits Summer 2021.

The Future of Collaborative Crafting

If you love knitting or crochet, there is a community craft project out there for you. Crafters come together to support hospital patients, children, pets, peace, and so much more. After more than a year of remaining apart from others to follow COVID-19 guidelines, community crafting initiatives made me feel connected both to makers and the world around me.

As we look toward the future of fiber craft in the twenty-first century, it’s the power of the internet and social media that will connect us across both space and time.

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ERIKA ZAMBELLO is a knitter and environmental communications specialist living in Florida. Her craft writings have appeared in Yarn People and National Parks Traveler. Follow her yarn adventures @knittingzdaily on Instagram.

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This article was originally published in Interweave Knits Summer 2021. Published to web 5/3/2021. Updated February 1, 2022.

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Collaborative Crafting and More in Interweave Knits