自由 / Liberty crochet postcards

Set of two postcards by textile artist Xiao Guo, using crochet notation to adapt their 2022 Liberty Crochet Project into an easily distributed physical form, part of an upcoming collaboration between Everything Matters and Guo.

Also available as singles

Over email and a cross-country call, we got to learn more about the project. Guo explained how it started a few years ago,

in August 2022, during lockdown, I posted a series of crochet tutorials on Red, a Chinese social media platform. In these videos, I demonstrated how to embed text within crochet fabrics using the filet crochet technique, where the grids of the pattern form the Chinese characters for "Liberty" (自由). To my surprise, many people made their own versions and shared them online. I thought they were very precious, so I compiled these images into a book, and packaged it in a box along with the physical fabric as a gift.  Because this project started as a tutorial, I wanted to keep the DIY aspects of it, so I also imagined it as a toolkit, with the tools (crochet hook and yarn) and pattern chart illustrated on the box... The crochet notation constructs the fabric and also deconstructs how it is made. I like keeping the tutorial and DIY aspects within the printed format.