Over time, fiber arts such as knitting, sewing, crocheting and embroidery have been slowly slipping away. What was once a common hobby and life skill for many has been lost to time, replaced by other, more accessible forms of art.
Specifically, knitting and crocheting are expensive and extremely time-consuming hobbies that many people struggle to take on. Knitting a sweater takes, on average, multiple weeks, up to months to complete. Eva Wieczorek ’26 is an example of somebody who dedicates her time to projects, specifically sewing.
“A lot of fiber arts take a really long time to complete,” Wieczorek said. “I think that people aren’t allowing themselves to be creative for that much time. Attention span is decreasing over the years, and it takes a lot of dedication.”
There is also an economic pressure that falls upon fiber artists. Yarn and fabric are expensive, to put it simply. With many small, independent craft stores closing down in recent years, artists are forced to choose whether they want to spend more money on good quality materials, or purchase cheaper, lower-quality materials. Fiber arts also require more materials than other arts.
“With drawing, you just need a piece of paper and a pencil,” Wieczorek said. “But with a lot of fiber arts, you need a sewing machine, fabric and yarn. The thread, needles and even the pins.”
With the increasing want of fast, easy clothing and materials, there is a reduced demand for handmade textiles. Fiber arts are historically a very skilled, woman-dominated art and that is being lost to time. Historically, knitting and sewing were driven by necessity, like in WW1 when textiles were handmade to support the war effort, but nowadays, it is just seen as a hobby. Elena Martin ’26 believes that the downfall of fiber arts in recent years is somewhat due to the lack of teachers.
“I feel like fiber arts used to be something that you had to learn,” Martin said. “And now that the generation that had to learn how to use that skill isn’t really around anymore, there’s less people to learn from.”
There are many different forms of fiber arts, which many people don’t realize. Shelley Rothenbuhler is a science teacher at South, but she also heavily participates in fiber arts in her free time. She has around 20 looms, with four of them being in her classroom alone and many being inherited from old fiber arts classes that used to be offered at South.
“It’s incredible what some people are able to make. What you could do in a painting, you could put into a tapestry,” Rothenbuhler said. “I don’t think many people really see that very often, so it doesn’t occur to them that those are possibilities.”
Rothenbuhler personally makes her own yarn and textiles to work from and dyes her own fibers into yarns. She hopes to restart South’s fiber arts club over the next few years, wanting to teach students how to create their own works. There are countless tutorials, patterns and resources for people looking to learn how to work with these materials online, and it’s easier than ever to learn how to do these complex arts.
“I think there has been a huge resurgence of crocheting and knitting in the past few years due to social media,” Martin said. “I see so many videos of these women who have thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers who are crocheting these really cool, innovative art pieces.”
