In this article I weave together the relevance of narrative textile work in therapeutic and human rights contexts; showcase Common Threads, an international nonprofit that uses story cloths with survivors of gender-based violence; outline a master's level art therapy course in story cloths; and relate how textiles helped build a sibling…

The authors hypothesized that a textile art-making activity that was high in arousal, engagement, and positive mood and low in rumination and negative affect would be most effective for mood repair and would buffer inflammatory immune reactions. Forty-seven experienced textile handcrafters were asked to recall an upsetting situation before random…