A specific history of women’s protest informs the two drawings by Ellen Lesperance included in Political Fabric. Each is based on the patterns of sweaters worn by the women of the Welsh group ‘Women for Life on Earth.’ These protestors marched from Cardiff to Greenham Common in Berkshire, England, in 1981 to protest the installation of 96 Cruise Nuclear missiles. The action turned into an encampment that lasted for decades. Lesperance studied the photographic archives of this group, which include images of these women wearing patterned sweaters that they had knitted on-site. She translated the designs of the sweaters into Symbolcraft, a standardized language for knitting, and transformed these grid-like patterns into gouache and graphite works executed on tea-stained paper. The resulting abstractions document the soft, armor-like sweaters that gently protected the bodies of these women as they sought to protect all bodies from the threat of nuclear war.