FEATURE
knitting and sewing along with Doris, who
co-owned the Black Sheep yarn shop on the
town square, Mary Jo, and an assortment of
the other ladies in her grandmother’s circle
of friends. They would visit one another’s
homes to eat lunch or dinner, to see quilts
in progress and sometimes so Kristine
could choose a new out t for her Barbie
dolls. Laid out across a dining room table
or a sideboard (or both) would be intricately
sewn Barbie wardrobes, created by some
of the local women for extra income. From
Lorene and her friends, Kristine learned
how to knit, sew, and quilt and, just as
important to her, experience the value and
joy of friendships forged though textiles.
In 1999, Kristine was an art history
student at Mills College in Oakland,
California, when she decided to spend a
semester in India. Though of cially there
to study art and architecture, she was
immediately drawn to the vibrant textiles
- this was her rst time experiencing
a culture in which the making of them
was front and centre. She learned about
Gandhi’s call, in the early part of the 20th
century, for Indians to spin and weave
their own cotton at home rather than buy
cloth manufactured in British mills, part
of a far-reaching program of non-violent
civil disobedience aimed at winning Indian
independence. For a nal research project,
Kristine traveled by train from Jaipur to
Ahmedabad, then by overnight bus to Kutch,
landing her nally in a circle of women
on the oor stitching. These women were
members of the Rabari, a semi-nomadic
people known for their intricate appliqué
and mirrored embroidery. “They were
amazed,” Kristine recalls, “that, as an
American woman, I could cook or stitch.”
She wrote a paper called Threads of Light:
Patterns of Change in which she explored
the ways in which Rabari women embed
their histories in their stitches. Later, after
graduating from college and being awarded
a Fulbright grant, she returned to this region
to continue her work with the Rabari as well
as learn more about the natural dyeing,
weaving, embroidery, and other forms of
handwork that have been practised in this
area of India for centuries.
After a year and a half abroad, Kristine
returned to the Bay Area in 2002 and, not
unpredictably, felt troubled and lost. “The
world was so big, and I had no idea who
I was supposed to be in it,” she recalls.
“I could see all the problems but didn’t
know how to interface with them.” Kristine
faced a wide array of problems – from
socioeconomic and sexual inequality to
the environmental toll of synthetic dye,
pesticides and other chemicals used in the
mass production of textiles, to the lack of
awareness among consumers of how and
by whom textiles and other manufactured