SDA Book Club: Rag Manifesto reviewed by Faith Hagenhofer
November 7, 2025
Rag Manifesto: Making, folklore and community by Rachael Matthews
On the last page of Rag Manifesto, Rachael Matthews writes “If we lose touch with the earth due to the… taboo over the use of trashed material, the rag pile becomes an alternative space to open our heads… Perhaps in some instances, rag could be the only material to offer us a way out of the conundrum of the Anthropocene.” Matthews has been leading up to this, and yet, she could have led us through her kaleidoscopic thinking with this as an introduction. The image on the cover of a person knocked down by an enormous textile ball shows us only one view of the ball. This manifesto is like turning that ball over and over and over, seeing new sides of a subject and new suggestions for action at every turn. Each pivoting chapter is an eyeopener on ways to regard and act in human/textile interactions, asking and answering what can be done with our textile desires, uses and inevitable discards, our rags.
Much of the journey in Rag Manifesto is Matthews’ willingness to re-view the “global rag pile”; her discoveries, activism, results of her experiments, and her “playful approach to the problem” of textile waste is documented AND she hasn’t gone it alone. I had to stop reading and sidetrack every few pages, looking up the people, organizations, and makers Matthews connected with. For example I love that, through collaboration with East London Textile Arts, London now has a RAG SCHOOL. She presents an ethics that has long existed in the music and the zine worlds—Try this at home in your community! No experience necessary! Further, she asks her audience to go beyond our aesthetic comforts into creating from the unexpected, collaborating with the weird material that shows up in discards, using traditional craft skills. Commit to using what you already have and know.
My mother was the kind of person who would bring home and wash abandoned towels from the beach, giving them new life. We wore many second-hand store garments, which were secured as if by treasure hunting with her close friend, Florence Richardson Rich. From these women I learned to shorten skirts and shirts, take out the hems of pants, and change the buttons to those of my liking, first steps in denying waste. When I first met her Florence introduced herself to me in a thick Boston accent: “I’m Florence and I’m a hooker.” To her delight my surprise must have shone, because she quickly showed me a studio in which she dyed, cut into strips, and hooked rugs from the discarded wool garments that she found on their forays. Rag Manifesto absolutely hooked me!
In Rachael Matthews’ words: “Just as you didn’t need to have been to music school to start a punk band, you don’t need a degree in weaving to run a community project with bits of rag. What little knowledge we have is never wasted. Invite the knowledge to the group and watch it unfold” (p.40).
–Faith Hagenhofer
- Publisher: Quickthorn (buy it here)
- Date: October 2024
- ISBN: 978-1739316037
If you’ve read this book, leave a comment and let us know what you think!
Do you have a recommendation for a recent fiber-related book you think should be included in SDA’s Book Club? Email SDA’s Managing Editor, Lauren Sinner, to let her know!
