#fiber work

[sinensis26]

"Omg thats incredible! I wish I was as creative as you!"

The first thing I ever sewed was a pouch at age 7. It was a rectangle of fabric folded in half and somehow it still turned out terrible. You dont want my creativity, you want the 41 years of failure after failure that got me to this exact moment.

[somnambulant-seraphim]

More bug embroidery! I tried out some larger, more detailed specimens this time: a house centipede (Scutigera coleoptrata) and a giant Malaysian leaf insect (Pulchriphyllium giganteum). 𓆤𓆨𓆧𓆨

I ran out of greens a couple times on the leaf insect, so I had to gradually incorporate different shades. I'm glad I did though, since it gave more dimension to the segments. <|:] 𖦹 *٭ 𓆣 𖢥 𓆣٭ * 𖦹

[maniccrafter]

Taking Flight, 25”x25”

crochet tapestry designed by me, bordered with a granny square frame.

[alpaca-clouds]

Let me Vent about Media Depictions of Stone Age people

So, to once more start with a completely random vent here: I hate how media depicts Stone Age people. Because it is just so fundamentally misinformed about how humans work and what we do. And I hate it so much.

Because, well... I ask you to imagine some Neolithic or even earlier humans. What do you imagine?

Do you imagine people with unkempt hair, who mostly communicate in grunts, and wear barely treated animal pelts over their shoulders instead of clothes, yet still live in a somewhat nuclear family unit where the dad and maybe the older brother is hunting, while the women are staying in the cave or something?

Because if you do, you have been dooped by media depictions. And it is not your fault. Because frankly, even within scientific literature we see these depictions again and again DESPITE KNOWING that it is not true.

If you look at pop culture you have stuff like the Flintstones and the Croods. And mind you, I generally really liked the Croods as a movie. But... oh, the tropes in there are... ugh.

And if you look at museums, and text books, and what not, you will still see stone age depictions that look something like this.

Sure, at least those have some sort of tribe, which is at least some advancement over the Stone Age Nuclear family, but I am still so annoyed with a bunch of it.

Because, first these are white people, most of those people would not have been white, especially not people who lived in areas where it would have been enough to just wear a random piece of leather around your hip as clothing. Secondly, well, isn't it funny how these stone age people are all wearing clothes that keep them covered just in a way that aligns with modern day standards (keeping the genitals and the female breasts covered - the latter we know was simply never a concern for most people on this planet until after 1500). And thirdly... Why does nobody believe that neolithic people had not discovered fiberworks? Because... like, we have not a whole lot found of that (because clothing generally just does not survive 10 000 years), but we have found needles, and pieces that were fairly likely used to work fibers - as well as some fiberwork that survived in clay. Moreover, we also know that the people who were wearing animal pelts, did not just wear them over their shoulders or around their hips, but usually actually had those cut onto form and stitched together like actual clothes.

For example, we have these pieces of Clay from which we know that there were weaved textiles.

The left one is a piece of fired clay found in Dolní Věstonice that shows fiber impressions. The side predates the Neolithic. The second is from an excavation side in Kisnytsia.

Then we have this, what looks like some biological images, but is actually flax fibers that have been treated and were likely used in the creation of clothing 30 000 years ago. Some of them were likely even dyed!

And it was not even just a homo sapiens thing. We have this bit of cord at a Neanderthal side, which also needs understanding of fiberwork to create. So, yeah, even Neanderthals had fiberwork.

And then we also have some of the female figures that you probably have seen before. And the way they are created make it very likely that the knotted things on their hip and head are actually a cap and a skirt of sorts. So clothes that was specifically made.

So, it is very likely that even when the people were wearing leathers and furs, it would have looked not like in the pictures above, where it is just roughly draped leathers, but actually something tailored like this or this.

And I know this seems like a weird topic to vent about, but there is actually a reason why I talk about this. And that is because the entire thing about textiles is related to the propaganda inherent to depiction of Neolithic and earlier people.

Neolithic people are depicted as living in nuclear families, to show that the nuclear family is a biologically natural unit for humans to live in, rather than a thing that was invented in the US of the 1950s to get people to buy more home appliances.

At the same time Neolithic and earlier people are shown grunting and wearing barely treated furs to hammer home of the idea that humans have progressed so far and that progression is somehow linear, and with this also framing colonialism as a good thing. Something that brings the colonized people ahead in this development. Which it is also not.

And lastly this is related to another issue that exists in anthropology and has only gotten better since the 2000s: the invisibility of women.

Because here is the thing: we know that a good chunk of human societies - especially unsettled societies - were fairly egalitarian in regards to gender/sex. Though there is some evidence that often a lot of knowledge was more generally transmitted among women. There is a good chance that the fire and the wheel were invented by women, not men. And this is weirdly enough linked to textile work.

Because for a long, long while it seems that textile work has played a central role in the gathering and transmission of women.

While the roles were not as firmly gendered as you imagine today - we have found burials of men with tools related to textile work, just as we have burials of women hunters and warriors - there seems in several early societies have been a relation between knowledge and fiber work.

I mean, technically you very likely know this subconsciously. Because you know old mythology, in which very, very often a goddess associated with textile work is also associated with wisdom and knowledge.

So, yes. This is all connected.

If you want to know more about this, Olga Soffer has written a lot on this. She is a former fashion industry insider turned anthropologist, who has done a lot of research on this exact topic. A lot of the stuff above is based on her research.

But yeah, generally speaking it is quite frustrating to me, that somehow Horizon Zero Dawn - the post-apocalyptic "stone age people hunting robot dinosaurs game - somehow has one of the more realistic depictions of early human fashion.

[yeoldecryptid]

How do you wind your yarn?

I use a swift

I grab someone with arms and hold them hostage

I use a chair or some other household object

I let it knot and deal with the consequences.

I only buy caked yarn.

I don’t do fiber arts button.

Voting ended onOct 14, 2025

[paleangellex]

To celebrate turkey day, I stuffed this bobbin!

Merino silk blend from Knitzandpearls Fiber works. I think the colorway was Moonshadow.

Don't look too close at the ply. I'm out of practice and really just wanted to finish something.

[missanniewhimsy]

Sorting through my mending pile before it drowns me

So as we all know I have a million sewing and other fiber projects in progress, and one of my goals for this year is to work down my stash, use what I have, spend more time repairing and mending things so I can wear them longer, etc. basically to be generally more sustainable about it all.

I've had a huge tote full of mending projects for years now and I finally went through it today (please be proud of me, it was hard), and I realized one of the things that was keeping me from doing it all this time was that even though most of the fixes take less than 15 minutes, even less than 5 most times, every project needed something different, and it felt really overwhelming to have to switch between supplies like that, so I decided to sort by what the project needed using the following categories:

Hand mending that doesn't need any other supplies (seams that have split, buttons that need tightening or replacing when the spare button is already on the jacket, basically you only need a needle, thread, and snips)

Machine sewing that doesn't need other supplies (longer seams that need to be fixed, hem's that are breaking away, etc.). I also subdivided this by color since I have a lot of the same colors in my wardrobe, that way I don't have to keep changing my thread and bobbin (for example, I have a pile of 4-5 black things that will all need black thread)

Darning (small knit fixes that can be done with scrap yarn, socks, mittens, small holes/seam repair)

Patching, this could be either hand or machine sewing, but I will need to go through my scrap bins and cut out patches for the holes in these garments, then they will get moved to either the simple machine or simple hand sewing piles.

This led to a subcategory for harder button things like moving a set of buttons from one garment to another or sizing up a whole set of buttons so they stop slipping out of the buttonholes

Knits to be frogged (I'm keeping these by the couch so I can work on them while I'm watching games and shows)

Garments to dye

Then finally, large/substantial changes needed (letting out a garment, refashioning a thrift find, replacing buttons with a zipper, hemming formalwear, etc.)

And the categories worked! I cleared out I think 7 items today?! and I feel loads better about what's left.