Richardson’s D.I.Y. aesthetic took feminist art in the 1970s in different directions - fitting her art practice around motherhood, work and household tasks. Her use of crochet was deliberate - traditionally considered a woman’s skill that Richardson aimed to politicise and imbue with greater meaning. Artworks from this period were made out of self-reflection, with several pieces created for herself and friends. They were not intended as standalone, anonymous art objects to be ‘elevated’ into a fine art context and removed from the domestic and personal sphere. 

Her humorously subversive aesthetic anticipated contemporary countercultures and movements that combined craft with street art, such as yarn bombing and guerilla knitting, and was a precursor to a younger generation of female British artists who combined visual puns with domestic objects, including perhaps most notably Sarah Lucas in her seminal works Self Portrait with Fried Egg (1996) or Pauline Bunny (1997). By injecting familiar household objects, like eggs, nylons and stiletto shoes, into art aided the process of defamiliarisation and what art historian Alexandra Kokoli has coined ‘undoing homeliness,’ destabilising the naturalised connection between women and the home.

"PLACING THE EMBROIDERED, KNITTED AND CROCHETED WORK IN AN ART GALLERY WAS INTENDED TO CHALLENGE THE VALUE-LADEN DIVISION BETWEEN 'HOME' AND 'WORK', 'ART' AND 'CRAFT' […] THE ART GALLERY IS MAINTAINED AS A SPECIAL SPACE BY WHAT IS KEPT OUTSIDE OF IT. FEMINISTO DISRUPTED THAT STRUCTURE."

- ROZSIKA PARKER, THE SUBVERSIVE STITCH: EMBROIDERY AND THE MAKING OF THE FEMININE (2017)