The broader embrace of traditionally female handicrafts as a hobby for urban, educated women stretches back to the 1990s, according to Emily Matchar, the author of the 2013 book Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity. During that time, the Riot Grrrl movement began taking “iconically old-fashioned domestic work” like sewing and knitting, and reclaiming it as edgy and political. The new aesthetic included throw pillows with embroidered daggers, patterns for a knit-your-own uterus, and zines like Needle & Hook: Knitting Our Little Punk Rock Hearts Out. Its spirit lives on in cheeky stunts like a feminist group’s 2012 invitation to send congressional Republicans a hand-knit vagina or uterus to protest retrograde attitudes toward women’s healthcare. The message was, “If you want one to control, here’s one of your own,” the group’s co-founder, and the author of six knitting books, told ABC.

By the early 2000s, knitting’s new wave had grown beyond its punk-rock origins and became a bona fide hipster trend, perhaps gently subversive but no longer relentlessly political. The 2004 book Stitch ‘n Bitch, written by the editor of the feminist magazine Bust, pitched the hobby to “young, creative, connected chicks with sticks,” and included patterns for things like Wonder Woman bikinis. That year, The New York Times ran a column by a woman who reported seeing knitters clacking away all over the city, and was tired of hearing that the cool-again pastime was “the new yoga.”

Knitting is relatively easy to learn, requires few expensive materials, and is a portable project. The same is true for cross-stitching, which followed in its wake as the craft of choice for saucy modern women, and a few modern men. (I count myself among this group, having cross-stitched a portrait of my favorite writer, among other projects.) Early trendsetters included the brand Subversive Cross Stitch, which offers patterns for stitching rude and ribald slogans like “Don’t Be a Dick,” “Whatever,” and “Shut Your Whore Mouth.” Many of them, suffice to say, would not be fit to appear on the pages of a family newspaper, let alone your grandmother’s sofa. Founder Julie Jackson’s book, Subversive Cross Stitch: 50 F*cking Clever Designs for Your Sassy Side, was re-released in an anniversary edition in February and is the top-selling cross-stitch book on Amazon.

The contemporary embroidery trend has plenty of feminist cache. The Internet is overflowing with girl-power embroidered messages: “free tampons for all,” “gender was never binary,” and “don’t tell me what to do.” The best-selling book Notorious RBG, a celebration of Ruth Bader Ginsberg published last month, includes a cross-stitch image of the U.S. Supreme Court justice urging readers to “work for the things you care about.” Matchar said in an interview that embroidery offers a special appeal as a craft for the politically minded: It can be used to write.