“Long before women were marching for the right to vote, they were cross-stitching,” begins the new book by Anna Fleiss and Lauren Mancuso. And while that line might seem incongruous reading it today — voting? cross-stitching? — there’s actually a history lesson in here: Back in the 18th Century, women learned how to read and write through stitching their ABCs. With Feminist Icon Cross-Stitch, out by Running Press, Fleiss and Mancuso offer a welcome update to the venerable craft.

Their book celebrates, as the title suggests, all the incredible women who do, in amusing cross-stitch form. It’s a pantheon of strong women throughout history, in various fields and walks of life: Marie Curie, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Simone de Beauvoir, among them, with accompanying bios. Our modern-day heroes who fight for women’s equality are there too, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Billie Jean King to Malala Yousafzai, as well as inspirational cultural icons — hello, Beyoncé.

But let’s not forget that this is, at the end of the day, an instructional how-to crafts book, and Fleiss and Mancuso also include detailed tutorials for the cross-stitch novice. So before you tackle a kohl-eyed, headdress-wearing Cleopatra, you can try a simple stitched slogan — although, even here, they’re plenty motivational, too. Sample sayings include “Women Belong in the House and the Senate” and the Elizabeth Warren classic, “Nevertheless, She Persisted.”