The Knitting Witch

Dangerous, magical women live in a world which explores queerness and antagonistic female relationships against the backdrop of Midwestern crafting culture. Craft magic is beauty and cruelty entwined, a perfect tool for witches to use against each other. After her mother is murdered, the eponymous knitting witch inherits a kidnapping and extortion ring, the victims sewn into enchanted quilts and hidden. With her mother dead, political squabbles consume the knitting witch\u27s coven and rival magical families put pressure on her to give up the quilts, including the dangerous Ma family, whose daughter the knitting witch loves. The knitting witch must navigate a forbidden romance, master her magical craft, and fend off her mother\u27s many enemies, all while searching for the hidden quilts. Once she finds the quilts, will she use them as her mother did to take power in the magical city of witches? Or will she find another way to survive, choosing love over power? The stories of queer women are unusual in the fantasy genre, bisexual stories even more so. This work hopes to amplify queer female narratives and draw attention specifically to the issues that bisexual women face in their family and romantic relationships. This thesis explores the question of how and why we love people who hurt us