Community embroidery project stitches the St. Mike’s community closer together

St. Mike’s is already known for its small, tight-knit community, but one professor is trying to tie together any loose threads with a new project. 

A community embroidery project located in Durick Library – a central gathering space for many on campus – is serving as a way to bring comfort and unity during challenging times. 

For several weeks, students and faculty have sat together, embroidering a large cloth, forming new connections, or sitting in comfortable silence while they stitch butterflies. 

The effort is being led by English Professor Maura D’Amore and her Junior Seminar class,  Rhetorics of Craft, which explores the politics and radical potential of craft in its many forms. 

The therapeutic process of creating together – even just stitching words and flowers – has proven to be a “beautiful experiment,” D’Amore said, and “one of the most wonderful projects I’ve been involved with at the college.” 

Saint Michael’s College community members embroider together as part of a community project in the Durick Library. (Photo by Maura D’Amore)

Crafting a course

D’Amore taught Rhetorics of Craft for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping in mind the interdisciplinary, community-minded nature of Junior Seminars.

“I was really aware of how lonely it was and how isolated everyone was,” D’Amore said. “I felt like we needed connection, and it made me feel good to make things with my hands, so I proposed the class.”

D’Amore enjoys crafting herself, and found that it could be an exciting way to teach and present material. 

“I was trying to think of ways where we weren’t always just writing essays, and that I could begin to balance students making things with students discussing literature or text,” D’Amore said.

A close-up of the community embroidery project, which was located in Durick Library in March 2026. (Photo by Teddy Vretzakis ’29)

Junior seminars are required courses for all students, so the students in the class are studying a variety of academic disciplines. Sadie Mae Gage ’27 is a Political Science and Gender Studies double major, and a student in the course who found herself meeting and getting to know new people through the class and the embroidery project. 

“It was people that I would never really interact with because I’m not on any of the same teams as them, and I’m not in any of their classes,” Gage said. 

According to D’Amore, some students don’t quite understand what they’re getting into when they sign up for the class – or come in with little experience crafting – but it’s something she has come to love about the experience. 

“It’s a mix,” D’Amore said. “There are some people who are super talented and have tons of experience, but there are definitely people who have never picked up a needle before and look super terrified when they realize we’re going to be doing that all semester.”

Despite the mix of experience, D’Amore believes that the entry point is low and crafting can be for everyone. 

“Much of it is following basic instructions and doing it again and again until you hone it, like any kind of craft or artistic tradition,” D’Amore said. “They do take attention and time, and you benefit from mentorship or seeing somebody else do it. But you don’t need to be particularly gifted in the thing to do it. You just have to have an interest and a curiosity.”

Finding joy through community and embroidery

A close-up of embroidered flowers that were part of a community embroidery project in March 2026. (Photo by Maura D’Amore)

This community embroidery project is the largest project D’Amore has organized for a class, but it isn’t the first. The last few times she taught the junior seminar, the students created a class quilt.

“The students definitely become a community in a different kind of way than they would in another class because they’re working together all the time,” D’Amore said.

Gage can attest to that after getting to know her classmates better during joint embroidery sessions. 

“We were talking the entire time and getting to know each other,” Gage said. “We were able to bond over the activity at hand.”

For another English class on Letters, D’Amore ran several community letter-writing labs during the spring 2025 semester. 

“I just liked the energy, and I thought this is something, especially as my kids are getting older, that I can contribute to the campus myself,” D’Amore said. “So I was thinking, how could I open it up to the campus more broadly?”

For the embroidery project, D’Amore was inspired by Stitch School in London, which strives to inspire connection through embroidery, using kits, workshops, and community events. 

“They had these big frames and preprinted embroideries, and they just popped into public places,” D’Amore said, in reference to Stitch School’s embroidery project called the Supper Cloth. “It looked like they were just showing people how to take a stitch in and out of something, and I was like, that’s what I want to do.”

Building community at St. Mike’s through craft

Students in Rhetorics of Craft learned how to embroider and make their own linocut stamps in the weeks prior to the project’s setup in Durick Library. They then used their handmade stamps to display a variety of figures, such as hearts and butterflies, on the stretched canvas. The idea was that participants could embroider over or in between them.

“It was really cool because when the actual event came, we got to watch people embroider and stitch over the things we made ourselves,” Gage said.

A Saint Michael’s College student pulls a piece of thread as she embroiders a cloth in Durick Library as part of a community embroidery project. (Photo by Teddy Vretzakis ’29)

The class also made handouts describing various stitching patterns and other related information. 

“People in the class now have some expertise,” D’Amore said. “But, they’re more mentoring or encouraging than thinking of themselves as holding all the information. That’s ideally what our classrooms are doing too, in some capacity.”

The embroidery project became the centerpiece of the class in many ways, as students were tasked with overseeing the project throughout its run. Working in shifts, they were there to help when needed and to engage with participants. 

In addition to building community, the project was a great way to show off the class’s hard work, Gage said.

“It was heartwarming to have my friends come and visit the project after I had talked to them about it,” Gage said. “Knowing that everyone, not just my friends, was stopping by and slowing down their day to embroider or just observe felt very special when we are living in such a fast-paced world.”

‘Craftivism’

Through projects like community embroidery, the class investigated the intersection of crafts and activism, or “craftivism.”

“It would be like people coming up with craft as an intervention into the politics of the time,” D’Amore said. “Right now, the ‘melt the ICE’ hats that people are knitting are a contemporary example. During the Civil War, there were abolitionist white women who refused to use cotton in their quilts. That would be what we might call a craftivist project.” 

Saint Michael’s College community members spend time together embroidering a decorated cloth as part of a community embroidery project in March 2026. (Photo by Teddy Vretzakis ’29)

The class decided against  making the embroidery project overtly political, but instead used it as a way to build community on campus in a new way, at a time of increased turmoil in the world.

“It’s a nice space,” D’Amore said. “Staff and faculty can come in and sit alongside each other and have a good time. That’s small results, but they’re ones I’m interested in. I keep going all the time because I also get to know my students in a different way. I love chatting with whoever’s there.”

The embroidery project also allowed participants to step away from their electronic devices – another important piece of the puzzle for D’Amore. 

“It was really important to do something that was away from screens and hands-on,” Gage said. “Most of my homework is all online now. It was important for me to do something physical rather than just looking at a screen.”

D’Amore has been inspired by the project’s response, as well as the staff, students, and entire classes who have tried their hand at embroidery. 

“I’m thrilled when I come back, and there’s different stuff done,” D’Amore said.

One student who had never embroidered before, D’Amore said, has even considered starting a craft club on campus. 

Now that she knows the work it takes to create this project, D’Amore said she would absolutely do it again.

“It was a good thing to do, even though it’s small,” D’Amore said. “It’s this really quiet thing, but I just feel like it’s a good thing in the world. It’s more of a success than I could have hoped it would be.”