Last week, in the hours and days immediately following a Kamala Harris campaign rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the words of former first lady Michelle Obama seemed to reverberate around every corner of the internet. Her warning to voters, and especially male voters, of what might happen to women across the country if Trump is elected president was instantly memorialized by a wave of Instagram posts and countless news reports. But Diana Weymar sought to record Obama’s words, and indeed the turning point they seemed to represent for the conversation around reproductive health, in another way.
The morning after the Michigan rally, Weymar reached for a dainty, white linen napkin, with lace trim at its edge and a floral design at its center, and embroidered the former first lady’s call to action atop it in thick, black thread. Within a day, Weymar had posted a photo of her creation to Instagram, where it quickly amassed thousands of likes, comments, and shares.
But as surprising as Weymar’s prompt decision to embroider an important political moment may seem, it was hardly a first for her. In fact, this hand-stitched quotation was just the latest in a series of tens of thousands of similar creations that the artist has made over the last six and a half years, as part of her “Tiny Pricks Project.”
Although Weymar has been working with textiles for most of her life, including as a means to explore memory, identity, place, and culture, it wasn’t until early 2018 that Tiny Pricks Project was officially born. “When I heard Trump say, ‘I am a very stable genius,’ I found a hook and a way to engage in the political discourse around his presidency,” she recalls.
For Weymar, stitching, an activity and artform with historical roots in traditional gender roles, is an ideal medium for political protest. “Textile and thread is perfect for the message; language is intimate,” she says. “The history of textile and embroidery reminds us of what has changed and what has not, the ways in which a subversive message can be simultaneously beautiful and nostalgic—and yet, so much of what is happening now is unfamiliar.”
What began as a personal project to capture President Trump’s unprecedented and often outlandish remarks, however, soon grew, when Weymar opened Tiny Pricks Project to the public. “It inspired hundreds of people to participate by making pieces, donating textiles, sharing posts, and finding their own craft-based approach to challenges,” she notes. With the help of Instagram and the community it fostered, Weymar was at one point receiving up to 40 pieces a day and posting them at the same cadence.
It was also social media that allowed the artist to connect with likeminded individuals, or “craftivists,” including Rachelle Hruska MacPherson, the founder of Lingua Franca, a clothing brand known for its hand-embroidered sweaters. “I recognized in Rachelle a passion for the handmade, for language, and for honoring traditional practices,” Weymar says. “We both believe that everyone is creative in a foxhole and that the Trump presidency felt like a foxhole. We make, we feel better.”
The two women took their shared love of crafting and of activism and turned it into a small exhibition, which was displayed in the windows of Lingua Franca’s downtown New York shop in the summer of 2019. “At the time, a lot of galleries felt like they couldn’t really touch the Trump stuff, but Rachelle was unafraid to put it in her window,” Weymar remembers. “The exhibit was an unspoken agreement with every single participant that we were in this together. They make it, we share it! And it really helped us take Tiny Pricks Project from fewer than 600 pieces and under 10,000 followers to what it now is.”
Even as the project continued to grow, garnering more attention and participants by the day, Weymar never intended for it to go on forever. “I said the project would be over when Trump was out of office—honestly, I didn’t think he would even finish the term—and I thought I would have this funny, little collection of ‘remember when’ moments,” the artist explains. But as Trump’s presidency went on and his comments and actions didn’t cease to shock, Weymar and her Tiny Pricks community remained as emboldened as ever to bear witness to and record the political climate through craft.
It wasn’t until spring 2021, about three months after the January 6th insurrection, that she finally decided to close the public part of the project. It was also around this time that Weymar expanded her focus from Trump and Trump alone. “I started turning to other voices, and I went to anyone who felt relevant,” she says, pointing to Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Colbert, among others. “So, the ripple started getting a little wider to cover other things that were happening, but I was also trying to give more space to writers and other people, because Trump just took up so much space.”
In the years since Trump’s exit from the White House and up until his current bid to return, Weymar has continued to reach for her thread and hook in moments of political turmoil, finding no shortage of material for Tiny Pricks Project. But she has also found a new way to share “craftivism” with the world: through her new book, “Crafting A Better World: Inspiration and DIY Projects for Craftivists.” “The book gives people a chance to think differently about how to approach the issues we find challenging,” she explains. “Everyone is crafting a life. We all make things from a special place in our lives, from a core being that is connected to where we come from and where we want to go.”
The book’s September release, just two months ahead of the all-important (and all-too-close) 2024 Presidential Election, was not exactly coincidence. “I think we are increasingly aware that we spend too much time in front of screens. We yearn for something else to do with our hands, to make, and a new way to connect,” Weymar says. “We want to see the hand work made visible, to touch real things, and to feel that what we are looking at is authentic, imbued with our humanity.” Protest and activism, she believes, are another way to express this yearning. “We want to be closer to what really matters, and I think it makes sense to use a personal medium to share our personal concerns,” the artist adds.
With the rise of “craftivism” and the upcoming election in mind, Weymar and Hruska MacPherson decided to join forces once again this fall, to curate a second, updated exhibition of the Tiny Pricks Project collection at Lingua Franca. “We are so happy to bring stitched language back to the West Village!” Hruska MacPherson says. “It’s been wonderful to share it with tourists and locals alike, to reconnect with people who came to the 2019 exhibit, and to reflect on where we have been and where we want to go.”
With every window of the West Village flagship—not to mention several walls inside the two-story shop—covered in embroidery, the more-than-500 pieces on display take on a collective identity that goes beyond the individual words and markings on each. “It’s like a mural or mosaic,” Weymar explains, her eyes sweeping across the instillation. “You look at this, and you know it’s not all done by one person, but it almost doesn’t matter. The individual artist becomes less important than the collective; everybody is there together.”
And unlike other art exhibitions, including those with politics at their center, the Tiny Pricks Project x Lingua Franca collection is far from complete. Even as visitors take in the volume, the artistry, and the messaging of these creations, Weymar and Hruska MacPherson are both upstairs, quietly stitching “I voted for her” onto vintage napkins and cashmere sweaters, respectively, and inviting others to do the same. Whether it’s by admiring a Tiny Pricks piece, wearing a Lingua Franca sweatshirt, or creating something of their own, the duo hopes that “craftivism” brings Americans a much-needed sense of calm in the current political era, especially ahead of this week’s election. “The ‘I made this’ or ‘you made that’ feeling reminds us to slow down a little. It’s a good reminder that we all have hopes for this election,” Weymar says. “It’s a creative way to state where you stand, to share what matters the most to you. From there, a conversation can begin.”