First of all, I want to say that I think all the quilters participating in CAFAM’s Man-Made: Contemporary Male Quilters are both amazing and amazingly talented. It’s a show I’d like to see; however, its title is one that I think needs some unpacking, so it and its ilk can be vanquished to the past once the show is over.

Every time gender orientation is used to denote a separateness in craft, it’s just one skip and jump away from exploiting difference as a moneymaker vs. celebration of that difference. When the craft resurgence began at the start of this century, the supposed irony of it was a continued topic of note. When I was talking about writing my uni dissertation on knitting and community development, one of my advisors was literally gobsmacked and said something to the effect of, “I would expect you to be researching punk rock tattoo parlors instead of knitting!” He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

This kind of reaction quickly led to a reframing of feminism, in that now we could use a drill and knitting needles and pay our own way, there was no need to shy away from work in the domestic sphere. I was one of many who wrote essays and columns about this, about the transitions that feminism had taken to get where we could knit our own items and not feel guilty (as some of the women I knew did). Given that being young and knitting was seen as such a cultural juxtaposition, it was ripe for the intrusion of irony.

Therefore, all the needlework done by our grandmothers was seen as uncool and of times gone by, because we, the tattooed, pierced, thrift store-clad ones, knew what was hip. But what we forgot to see was that one day, our work will also be seen as uncool and of times gone by. We will become our grandmothers. And instead of taking our grandmothers’ work and praising it for skill (because it’s still skill even if you don’t like the aesthetic choices, right?), it was mocked at large, as something done of a different, less-hip era. And we should be ashamed of ourselves, because irony is not cool, it’s a tearing down of someone else’s vision in order to elevate yourself, nothing more.

So, in this light, when I saw posts about this show at CAFAM, I was astounded that this was still an angle with which to reach people. That this was still something that is deemed necessary. That the best curatorial solution here was “Look! It’s dudes who quilt?! Isn’t that hilarious/awesome/a novelty? This is so creative!” vs. let’s show some quilts made by people that are inspiring/working with different materials/whathaveyou. Because choosing irony, choosing gender vs. method or skills, as a marker of things to display is a cheap shot in the light of all the other amazing things people are creating.

And while I wish for this show to be successful and for all the artists within it to gain useful contacts from their being showcased, I also wish that we could put irony to bed. Forever. That we could start looking at craft objects that were created with different aesthetics and see them as valuable for their skill. That we stop putting our grandmothers down in the name of success, because it sounds hip or funny. That we start taking from history in a way that celebrates it vs. mocks its outdated fashions.

Because I don’t find irony funny anymore, especially when it comes to craft. I want to share skills with my relatives, not make fun of their aesthetic choices. I want to stop seeing places, businesses, and museums try to make a quick buck off of irony and show us some badass historical skills instead. Or what people are doing now that needs to be celebrated despite what their gender orientation is. I know that people that look like me may not be expected to knit or make things by hand, even now, 15 years on, but we do, and it’s awesome. We should be turning the “What? You knit?” questions around and asking, “Do you make anything by hand?” and share knowledge instead.

But first, we need to work on our relationship with the past a bit, vs. trying so hard to forget about it. We need to stop using the past’s aesthetic choices against them, because all those felted cozies will look just as out-of-date as those shell-art lanterns in a few years. We need to be okay with the fact that people of all orientations like to craft and that’s not weird or particularly even worth celebrating. So down with irony and its celebration, up with celebrating those that make at all in 2015, because it’s still a beautiful choice. And just by the act of making crafty things, we are all united, no matter what gender or age. To me, that’s what’s worth holding on to and celebrating, our connectedness, not what may appear as different to some.