Unititled (Story Quilt 1) 2020-22. Mixed textile media. With South County Homeless Project, Hayward
and volunteers Maureen ONeill, Morgan Baxter, Rosemary Sallee
Story Quilts and DIY
with Unhoused Communities
The Story Quilt Project grew out of a free cape-making workshop that we lead as part of Sunday Streets in San Francisco’s Tendeloin neighborhood in the Fall of 2019. In this project, Feral Fabric invited neighborhood residents to help decorate one of several capes, and then be photographed wearing the cape in front of a TENDERLOIN neighborhood banner. Unhoused neighbors seemed particularly interested in participating, and got us thinking seriously about different kinds of visibility around homelessness in the Bay Area.In 2021, Feral Fabric developed a DIY kit as a way to continue our Story Quilt project during Covid. This initial kit developed into the Sew & Mend Kit that we are still distributing today in partnership with Punks with Lunch and the Village in Oakland.
Made primarily using donated materials, kits contain everything recipients need to express themselves through textiles, and double as a fix-it and embelishment kit for clothes, tents or anything else made of fabric. Later kits also contained a Housing Rights fabric poster/patch. We see the kits as a natural progression in the spirit of the original idea - instead of coming together in quilt form, the panels remain dispersed in communities throughout the Bay Area. Feral Fabric also distributed sewing machines and textile art materials to several homeless shelters serving youth and families in Berkeley and Oakland.
Our intention for this project was to gain visibility and rights for people experiencing homelessness in the Bay Area. We held our final exhibition of the Story Quilt project in the outward-facing windows at Pro Arts Gallery in Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, California in May-June of 2022. Thank you to all of our participants, in particular Toan Nguyen. Special thanks also to the volunteers who helped us finish the quilts - Maureen O’Neill, Morgan Baxter, and Rosemary Sallee and to Social Justice Sewing Academy for material donations.
This work was made possible in large part through an Artist Grant from the City of Berkeley
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See research archive for this project
1. Unititled (Story Quilt 1). Feral Fabric and South County Homeless Project, Hayward. 2020-2022
2. Unititled (Story Quilt 2). Feral Fabric and Here/There Camp, Berkeley/Oakland. 2020-2022
3. Untitled (Tarp). Feral Fabric 2022
4. Unititled (Story Quilt 3). Feral Fabric and Women’s Daily Drop-In Center, Berkeley. 2020-2022
5. In Solidarity. Feral Fabric. 2022
6. Flyer for final exhibition at Pro Arts. 2022. Design Paulina Berczynski
7. Housing rights fabric poster/patch. 2021. Design Paulina Berczynski
8. Documentation of Tenderloin Community Workshop. Feral Fabric. 2019
9. Installation shot (from inside Pro Arts after its closure andconversion to a free covid testing clinic). 2022
10. Installation shot (from outside of Pro Arts). 2022
11. DIY kits. Feral Fabric 2021-2022
12. Making DIY kits. 2022
13. Kit distribution with Punks with Lunch. 2022
14. Basic sewing instructions included withthe kits
15. Poster printed on the back of instructions included in the kits
16. Documentation of canvas tarp giveaway. 2022
Project Research
An archive
of the research, influences, and ideas for our Story Quilt project with unhoused communities and the organizations that support them.
Names Project / The AIDS Quilt
Rosie Lee Tompkins
Rosie Lee Tompkins was a Bay Area quilter known for her brightly colored improvisational quilts. With help from collector Eli Leon, Tompkins brought traditional quilting into a contemporary art context both in form and production.
︎ Read our thoughts on Tompkins’ work
︎ Tompkins obituary, NY Times
Kawartha Truth and Reconciliation Project
KTARP is a group of first peoples and settlers based in Canada, who meet monthly to share stories and histories, learn from each other, and make quilts. While quilting they talk about the brutal history of Canada’s colonial project, racism, and inequality. Each quilt panel illustrates an individual and varied perspective on the theme of the legacy of the residential schools in Canada.
︎ Go to website
Names Project /
AIDS Memorial Quilt
The largest piece of folk art in the world.
︎ Names Project / AIDS Memorial Quilt information and history
︎ The Quilt digitzewd and interactive via National Aids Memorial website
Faith Ringgold
Iconic multimedia artist Faith Ringgold has said that she switched from painting as a medium to fabric to get away from the association of painting with Western/European traditions. Similarly, the use of quilt allowed her advocation of the feminist movement as she could simply roll up her quilts to take to the gallery, therefore negating the need of any assistance from her husband.
︎ Artist website
Ana Torma
We love Canadian-Hungarian textile artist Anna Torma’s work because it expands the parameters of what a story quilt could be.
︎ Artist website
1. Workshop Documentation: NIAD Art Center, Richmond
2.Instructional material for workshop at Berkeley Art Museum
Since 2018 Feral Fabric has led backpatch, banner, quilt, and cape making workshops at art institutions and in the community. Our workshops look at fabric as a tool for communication, and continue the Bay Area’s tradition of radical textile production and clothing modification.
We see these workshops as part of the lineage of Native Funk and Flash, DIY, Punk, story quilts and political banners. Because of Covid, in 2020 and 2021 we also modified our in-person workshops for Zoom, and developed DIY kits as a way to bring workshops together virtually.
In our backpatch workshops, we encouraged participants to celebrate their identity and get a little weird using applique and other surface decoration techniques. We have also led free workshops where participants made fabric signs, capes, and banners to self-represent and share community values.
In 2020 Feral Fabric started a series of story quilt workshops with members of unhoused comunities, which evolved to distributing free craft and mend kits with partner organizations, and donating workshop materials to homeless shelters in the Bay Area.
Also in 2020, Feral Fabric was commissioned by Berkeley Art Center to create a community banner artwork to hang outside their building during Covid. This project was realized using DIY kits with instructions on how to participate and an optional zoom workshop. The final banner included work by over 40 neighbors, seniors, school kids, artists, unhoused community, and others.
1. May Day 2019
2. Tenderloin 2019
3. Oakland Pride 2018
4. Figment 2018
5. SF Mission 2019
6. Here/There Camp 2020
7. Sunday Streets 2019
8. Berkeley Art Museum 2018
9. Zoom Berkeley Art Center 2020
Workshop Archive
2021 Back Patch Zoom Workshop. SCRAP, SF
2021 Appliqué Workshop. Southern Exposure Youth Advisory Board, SF
2021 Back Patch Zoom Workshop. Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley
2020 Community Banner Workshop. Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley
2019 Back Patch Workshop. NIAD Art Center, Richmond
2019 Community Banner Workshop. Sunday Streets, Western Addition, SF
2019 Wearable / Cape Workshop. Sunday Streets, Tenderloin, SF
2019 Back Patch Workshop. Sunday Streets, Mission District, SF
2019 May Day Sign Workshop. Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland
2018 Oakland Pride Banner Workshop. Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland
2018 Back Patch Workshop. Figment : De-Commodified Participatory Art Event, Mosswood Park, Oakland
2018 Back Patch and Banner Workshop. Berkeley Art Museum
Feral Fabric is the collaborative project of artists Paulina Berczynski and Amanda Walters. We bring forward ideas, conversations, and workshops that combine our interests in textiles, contemporary art, and personal and cultural transformation. Since 2018 we have published Feral Fabric Journal, an online periodic journal that highlights radical textile production in art, activism, and countercultural movements.
We have led textile-based workshops and projects with institutions including Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley Art Center, Southern Exposure’s Youth Advisory Council, and NIAD Art Center. In 2020-2022 Feral Fabric also worked on Story Quilts, a narrative quilting and DIY craft project with unhoused community in the Bay Area. Feral Fabric supports critical thinking about capitalist and socially-normative structures, and promotes inclusion of people and progressive voices and values.
Paulina Berczynski is a Polish-American artist and designer working interdisciplinarily with textiles, social practice, printmaking, and design. She is influenced by movements for social justice and collectivity, domesticity and womens work, and folk arts and crafts. She received her MFA in Social Practice from California College of the Arts, and her BFA in Communication Design from Carnegie Mellon University. She has led textile-based projects in Łódż (Poland), Berlin (Germany), and with many California art institutions including High Desert Test Sites (Joshua Tree), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley), and Southern Exposure (San Francisco). She recently completed a Fulbright Grant to Poland, where she researched radical textiles from the time of Poland’s occupation in the 1960-80s. She is currently developing several participatory, web-based, and surface design projects. She is based in Berlin.
Amanda Walters is a writer, sculptor, and textile artist from south Florida. Her work explores the strange and well manicured history of her home state, the intersections of landscape and capitalism, social ecology, and the fantasies embedded in tourism. Walters received her MFA in Studio Practice and MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts, and her BFA with emphasis in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Berkeley Art Center, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, San Francisco Arts Commision, and Southern Exposure in San Francisco, among other places.
Contact us! feralfabric@gmail.com
Follow us! @feralfabric
︎
We have led textile-based workshops and projects with institutions including Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley Art Center, Southern Exposure’s Youth Advisory Council, and NIAD Art Center. In 2020-2022 Feral Fabric also worked on Story Quilts, a narrative quilting and DIY craft project with unhoused community in the Bay Area. Feral Fabric supports critical thinking about capitalist and socially-normative structures, and promotes inclusion of people and progressive voices and values.
Paulina Berczynski is a Polish-American artist and designer working interdisciplinarily with textiles, social practice, printmaking, and design. She is influenced by movements for social justice and collectivity, domesticity and womens work, and folk arts and crafts. She received her MFA in Social Practice from California College of the Arts, and her BFA in Communication Design from Carnegie Mellon University. She has led textile-based projects in Łódż (Poland), Berlin (Germany), and with many California art institutions including High Desert Test Sites (Joshua Tree), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley), and Southern Exposure (San Francisco). She recently completed a Fulbright Grant to Poland, where she researched radical textiles from the time of Poland’s occupation in the 1960-80s. She is currently developing several participatory, web-based, and surface design projects. She is based in Berlin.
Amanda Walters is a writer, sculptor, and textile artist from south Florida. Her work explores the strange and well manicured history of her home state, the intersections of landscape and capitalism, social ecology, and the fantasies embedded in tourism. Walters received her MFA in Studio Practice and MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts, and her BFA with emphasis in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Berkeley Art Center, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, San Francisco Arts Commision, and Southern Exposure in San Francisco, among other places.
Contact us! feralfabric@gmail.com
Follow us! @feralfabric
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