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The Social and Political Roles of American Sewing Circles

Dr. Laura Sapelly will discuss the role sewing circles held in our past and why they continue to be important. Participants are encouraged to do their handiwork during the presentation!

Sewing circles, whether knitting, sewing, or quilting, have long been a "women's activity" used to meet a physical need, but their influence and importance go beyond just the finished good. Dr. Laura Sapelly, Assistant Teaching Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and History at Penn State University, will share her research on how sewing circles impacted women's roles and U.S. history.

Please register to attend this virtual event. Contact mzimmerman@alexlibraryva.org for more information. 

Laura E. Sapelly is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and History at Penn State. Her fine art and writing explore the tensions between “women’s” work, politics, community, and displacement. This focus emerged from her research on contributions made by American women to mass movements through their sewing circles. Currently, she is writing a book that merges quilting with STE(A)M education.

Publishing credits include Spinning, sewing, and soliciting for the American Revolution in Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the anti-Trump pussyhats, and a post for the Textile Society of America’s biannual conference, A feminist pedagogy through the sociopolitical stitch.

Dr. Sapelly has exhibited her artwork at the Cyclorama, Boston Center for the Arts; Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota; Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts; and the Belger Arts Center, Kansas City, MI. Her art is in private and public collections, including the New Bedford Free Public Library, New Bedford, MA.

Cafe Lemont/Penn State Sewing Circle, 2015