I appreciate art, but I especially appreciate practical art — clothing, rugs, bowls, furniture, houses, et cetera — items that are well-made, beautiful, and useable in everyday life. Bonus points for natural materials (i.e. not plastic) and/or recycling materials.
Fort Campbell, KY, has a very nice, small, military museum, packed with a lot of exhibits. Being a fiber person, what really caught my eye was this:
The sign with the exhibit said: “Dutch girl’s parachute dress. This dress was made for a Dutch Child shortly after ‘Market Garden’ (Sept. 1944) using parachutes recovered from the drop zones. Colored resupply parachutes supplied the colored threads used in the dress.” (Operation Market Garden was an unsuccessful Allied military operation in the Netherlands during World War II. It was the largest airborne operation up to that time.)
It was World War II, supplies were scarce or non-existent, especially with armies all around. And some Dutch woman took these tools of war, and turned them into a little girl’s dress.
That’s craftivism.
Hermit by Moonlight 
I love this, Judith! Thanks so much for sharing it, and for letting me know about it in a comment on my blog the other day! 🙂 The relationship between craft and war never fails to fascinate me. I don’t know if it’s the juxtaposition of the culturally masculine and the culturally feminine or of hard and soft or what, but it’s always amazing to find examples of work that actively combine both!
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You’ve mentioned all the reasons it fascinates me, Betsy, along with the determination to survive with grace. I suspect that is something we all need to know.
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