The spiritual significance of ‘craft’, particularly the everyday acts of making in the ‘feminine’ sphere, has been neglected in mainstream theology and romanticized in feminist discourse. Drawing on literature, feminist theory and personal experience, this article considers how traditionally female crafts, such as knitting and sewing, are a form of self-expression, and a ‘being at home in the world’ which is both spiritually and politically empowering.
Davis CunninghamC (1995) Craft: making and being. In: Apostolos-CappadonaD (ed.) Art, Creativity, and the Sacred: An Anthology in Religion and Art. New York: Continuum.
7.
GeschwandnerS (2007) KnitKnit: Profiles + Projects from Knitting’s New Wave. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
8.
GogginMDFowkes TobinB (eds) (2009) Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750-1950. Surrey: Ashgate.
9.
GogginMD (2009a) Introduction: threading women. In: Daly GogginMFowkes TobinB (eds) Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750-1950. Surrey: Ashgate, 1-9.
10.
GogginMD (2009b) Stitching a life in ‘pen of steele and silken inke’: Elizabeth Parker’s circa 1830 sampler. In: Daly GogginMFowkes TobinB (eds) Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750-1950, Surrey: Ashgate, 31-50.
11.
GriffinS (1978) Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. London: The Women’s Press.
12.
GordonBHortonL (2009) Turn-of-the-century quilts: embodied objects in a web of relationships. In: Daly GogginMFowkes TobinB (eds) Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750-1950. Surrey: Ashgate, 93-110.
13.
HedgesE (1991) The needle or the pen: the literary rediscovery of women’s textiles work. In: HoweF (ed.) Tradition and the Talents of Women. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 338-64.
14.
HuntME (1991) Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship. New York: Crossroad.
15.
LevineFHeimerlC (2008) Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft and Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
16.
MaitlandS (1999) Brittle Joys. London: Virago.
17.
McDannellC (1995) Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
18.
McFagueS (1997) Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature. London: SCM Press.
19.
MillerD (2008) The Comfort of Things. Cambridge: Polity.
20.
MorganD (2005) The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
PritashHSchaechterleICarter WoodS (2009) The needle as the pen: intentionality, needlework, and the production of alternate discourse of power. In: Daly GogginMFowkes TobinB (eds) Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750-1950. Surrey: Ashgate, 13-29.
23.
RaphaelM (1996) Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
24.
SennettR (2008) The Craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
25.
StollerD (2003) Stitch’n Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook. New York: Workman.
26.
TorsneyCB (1993) ‘Everyday Use’: my sojourn at Parchman Farm. In: FreedmanDPFreyOMurphy ZauharF (eds) The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 67-74.
27.
TorsneyCBElsleyJ (eds) (1994) Quilt Culture: Tracing the Pattern. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
28.
WalkerA (1994) Everyday use. In: ChristianB (ed) Everyday Use. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 23-38.
29.
WiesnerME (1986) Spinsters and seamstresses: women in cloth and clothing production. In: FergusonMWQuilliganMVickersNJ (eds) Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 191-205.