I originally wrote this post this past summer when I was fully on my craftivism kick. At the time I couldn’t be bothered to look up the actual name of the book or the author or take a photo of the library’s copy of the book so this post languished. I finally have done all three of those things so the following is the original post with the pertinent information properly added in.

As I mentioned in my post about my love of my local library, when I get interested in a subject, I find all the books I can on the subject and start reading (or at least skimming) them all. My latest bent has been craftivism, the combination of craft and activism (and its sister – artivism, art + activism). Since my library has a few of these books, I figured I’d write up a little review of them.

Today we’ll start with Crafting a Better World by Diana Weymar.

I rather enjoyed this book and unlike a lot of the nonfiction books I’ve been checking out of the library lately I actually read this one cover to cover.

While it touts to include instructions for DIY projects, which is mostly what I thought I had been looking for, it was actually mostly made up of stories and interviews from various artists and craftivists on why they do what they do. There were a handful of tutorials sprinkled throughout but the only one I actually plan on following along with is the message banner one, which mostly served as inspiration rather than true instructions.

Still, I really enjoyed the author’s perspective and her own embroidery throughout the book. It helped inspire me to do some more embroidery of my own and shifted my perspective on the sort of subject matter that I could or should emboider.

This particular book was especially textile-focused, which I didn’t mind at all as someone who tends to lean towards the textile-based crafts.