busy hands

Category : Textiles
Date : January 23, 2015

On a recent subway ride, I watched a woman crochet a colorful hat surrounded by riders tapping away at their ‘smart’ phones. Busy hands. All hands were indeed busy, but sometimes juxtaposition says it all. The woman will have an actual useful object to show for her time, but what can be said of the others?

Are we truly busy when scrolling through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? Does one’s mind settle down as it does whilst knitting, as Cat Bordhi revealed in her essay, “A Guide for Bringing Knitting and Spinning into Elementary through High School Classrooms.” Secretly, she had her students knit and spin during her humanities class without first obtaining permission from the administration. When the district superintendent stopped by unannounced, her students’ hands were busy knitting, spinning or winding wool, whilst listening to an audio-tape. She feared repercussions, but the superintendent later reported “that what struck him first as he came through our door was that every single student was productively and positively engaged as a member of a thriving community of learners, and that he had rarely seen a classroom so attentive on so many levels: listening, working with the hands and helping one another.”

Working with one’s hands yields compound results. Monica Moses’ editorial in the February/March 2015 issue of American Craft cites multiple studies equating using one’s hands as a tool to combat depression. The actual ‘act’ of making not only brings happiness, it also fosters the human spirit. Stephen S. Ilardi notes “that people whose lifestyles more closely resemble those of our ancestors–for example, the Amish, who make their own furniture, sew their own clothes, and drive handheld plows–experience significantly less depression.”

Jean-Francois Millet, Shepherdess Seated on a Rock, 1856 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Jean-Francois Millet, Shepherdess Seated on a Rock, 1856 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Knitting was a skill that both boys and girls learned in earlier centuries. Larissa and Martin John Brown report that in the late 1700s, villagers from Dentdale, England, men women and children, came together at the end of the work day for a “sitting.” They posit:

“It’s tough to imagine that world now, when you can buy a ten-pack of factory-made socks for a few dollars, but this was a time when the vast majority of socks, stockings, and gloves in the Western world were not just knitted, but knitted by hand. They were knitted because knitted fabric has properties of stretch, shapability, and seamlessness that make it superior to woven and sewn work for those garments. They were knitted by hand because knitting machines, though in existence from 1600s, took centuries to overtake hand production.”

My first major knitting project was a pair of socks on four DPNs (double pointed needles). I had no idea how to construct the heel flap and then turn the heel, but then found helpful resources and fellow knitters to guide me along. I had almost finished one sock and slipped it on. It was huge, so off I ventured to my local yarn store for a consult. Deb, the owner, confirmed that the sock was too big for me and too small for my husband. So as I gulped, we ripped it out and I started again on a circular needle. Now, thanks to her, I knit two socks at once and enjoy wearing my hand knit pairs.

Maybe someday, I will board a subway car and there will be a “sitting” going on — many of those in the car knitting or crocheting. What if more people started knitting their own socks, hats and gloves, not only to quiet the mind, but also to connect, with making and with others? Trust me, tucking a ball of sock yarn and a pair of circular needles in one’s bag is easy.

Cat Bordhi, “A Guide for Brining Knitting and Spinning into Elementary through High School Classrooms,” www.catbordhi.com accessed in July 2011. Her essay as well as a lesson plans may be found on her website. The lesson plans are a history of civilization told via fiber.

Monica Moses, “Making it Better,” American Craft, February/March 2015, pg. 10. Moses cites the research of Stepehn S. Ilaridi in her editorial.

Brown, Larissa and Martin John Brown, Knitalong: celebrating the tradition of knitting together, (Stewart, Tabori &Chang, 2008), 42.


presents

Category : Textiles
Date : December 20, 2014

Tis the season, as they say, and many are rushing around trying to find the perfect gift. One might suggest that presents often don’t come in the form of an actual object, but instead as a memory that returns to the forefront while your hands are busy knitting, for example.

A few weeks ago, I attended a knitting afternoon arranged by my fiber friend extraordinaire, Abigail Doan. She wanted to introduce a group of us to the “Turkish slipper.” After consuming soothing cups of tea, we seated ourselves in a circle, and received our kits containing the pattern for the “Sifa Silver Turkish Slipper” and balls of Figgi yarns.

Abigail explained that the pattern is designed by Catharine Bayar, a textile expert living in Istanbul, and is based on the traditional slippers her husband’s female relatives knitted for generations. Furthermore, the yarn, made from delicious, durable Turkish cotton, includes a strand of silver and is called sifa defined as healing in Turkish. We could not wait to start, and all cast on and began to work.

A pair of knitted lace Turkish slippers. Photo by Abigail Doan.

A pair of knitted lace Turkish slippers. Photo by Abigail Doan|Lost in Fiber.

When the event finished, we packed up our work and headed off, with promises to be wearing our slippers soon. I am adoring knitting my slippers, not only due to texture of the yarn in my hands as I work combined with the stitches that create the lace work of the pattern, but for the memory that it sparked, and this present to me is invaluable.

Knitted slippers. Like a bolt of lightening, I recalled Nannie, my grandmother, giving us presents of her hand made wool slippers at Christmas time. Each year we received a new pair, sometimes with pompons, others with reinforced-soles, always knitted perfectly in bright color combinations, and so warm.

It is a long way from Hickory, NC (Nannie & Papa lived there) to Istanbul in real time, but in memory time, the distance is quite short, linked for me by yarn. This holiday season, I am thankful for the cherished recollections of time spent with Nannie, especially when watching her hands transform yarn into slippers or sweaters and crops into delicious dinners. And I am thankful for my friends and their experiences and memories. A true present indeed.

Pattern for Turkish Slipper maybe found on Etsy.

Information on Figgi Yarns found here.

Information on Bazaar Bayar and their knitting retreats found here. Perhaps, this is something to put on your to-do or wish list for 2015!


sky strainer

Category : Textiles
Date : December 9, 2014

The ephemeral often becomes useful–milkweed silks for candlewicks, cattail fluff for pillow stuffing, and spider webs for staunching wounds—as well as inspirational.

Glimpsing lacelike spider webs, fluffy cattails and silky milkweed on my morning walks spurred me to re-examine strands of fiber and sparked a series of work. The sculptures in sky strainer series are made from my handspun wool in the knotless netting technique. Some of the pieces are nestled in tree branches or suspended from the ceiling, as one might glimpse a light orb or a spider web out of the corner of one’s eye.

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In his book, Primitive Scandinavian Textiles in Knotless Netting, Odd Nordland examines ancient textiles, including the beautiful milk strainers made from cow tail hairs gathered in the fall after the cows no longer needed their long tails to ward off flies. He further examines the many uses of the cow: for food (both meat to eat and milk to drink, often out of the horn of the cow), and for skin and sinews (providing material for sewing, often with needles carved from cow bones).

It is not only the magnificence of the lacelike milk strainers that influences my series, but also the industriousness of the farmers that used them. Early farmers depended upon their cattle in a wide variety of substantive ways. These cows were not being raised on industrial cattle farms and being fed corn and antibiotics, but instead were eating native grasses under the stars and sky.

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In our over-mechanized society, we can draw inspiration from the ancients who exemplified such resourcefulness and directness in their daily routines. Be it from the turning of the spinning wheel to make the yarn, or the slow methodical movement of the needle twining through the loops, the sky strainers hearken to an earlier age and push forward.

Odd Nordland, Primitive Scandinavian Textiles in Knotless Netting (Studia Norvegica No. 10, Oslo University Press, Oslo, 1961), p.93.

Note: sky strainer #6 is currently on view until January 31, 2015, in the exhibition Circle Round at the KNOX Gallery, Monterey, MA. https://www.facebook.com/knoxgallery?sk=wall


mended

Category : Textiles
Date : November 19, 2014

The thermometer’s mercury slid to a new seasonal low this morning, 16 degrees F.  Thankfully, outdoor chores—putting the garden to bed, storing onions and garlic, drying goldenrod and mugwort, raking leaves, and storing hoses, etc.—have been completed and my mind turns to the roster of indoor tasks: mending, sewing, weaving and knitting.

My friend Audra Wolowiec sent me a treasure in the post—a piece of fabric purchased at a yard sale with lovely mending. What causes one to repair, and once darned, to save, store and cherish? Earlier generations were trained to mend and darn; an exquisite 1711 darning sampler found in the Cooper Hewitt’s collection provides visual testament to both skill and beauty. The description reads like a poetry: “…fifteen mending crosses and two corner mends, with picot edgings, a center GD 1711, surmounted by a crown.”

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Even though I received my Girl Scout badge for sewing and attempted many embroidery stitches as a teenager, my hands lack the skills to complete the delicate inter-lacings of thread. Proudly, I recently completed my Alabama Chanin D.I.Y. skirt, and although there are thousands of stitches on this skirt, their lack of consistency compels me to become more proficient in the needle arts. Where do I find a school that will teach me the stitches outlined in Catherine Beecher’s 1843 book, A Treatise on Domestic Economy:

“Every young girl should be taught to do the following kinds of stitch, with propriety. Overstitch, hemming, running, felling, stitching, back-stitch and run, button-stitch, chain-stitch, whipping, darning, gathering and cross-stitch.”

If I lived in United Kingdom, I would register for Tom van Deijnen’s darning class in just two day’s time in Dalston, London. Van Deijnen started The Visible Mending Programme, which:

“…seeks to highlight that the art and craftsmanship of clothes repair is particularly relevant in a world where more and more people voice their dissatisfaction with fashion’s throwaway culture. By exploring the story behind the garment and repair, the Programme reinforces the relationship between the wearer and garment, leading to people wearing existing clothes for longer, with the beautiful darn being worn as a badge of honor.”

Indeed, why not accent the mending on one’s beloved sweater, for example, with contrasting thread, thus reinforcing both metaphorically and literally, its importance? After all, does a garment really need to be discarded due to a hole or rip?

“Darning Sampler, 1711.” https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18345433/, Accessed on November 19, 2014.

Mirra Bank, Anonymous Was A Woman: A celebration in words and images of tradition American art—and the women who made it, (St. Martin’s Press, 1979), pg. 24.

“About Tom Holland.” http://tomofholland.com/about/, Tom van Deijnen, accessed on November 19, 2014.


revolutionary actions

Category : Textiles
Date : August 8, 2014

Revolutionary actions take on many forms. The colonists started by tossing casks of tea into Boston Harbor; in turn, this action spiraled outward to spinning bees on town greens and the production of “homespun.”

On January 1, 2014, a ‘revolutionary act’ took place in another Massachusetts’ town—The Tailor Project. Can you imagine not buying an item of clothing, a pair of shoes or any jewelry for a year? Amy DuFault, fed up with the ‘fast fashion’ industry, decided to take on the challenge. Armed with clothing already in her closet, she teamed up with her local tailor, Kathryn Hilderbrand, of Stitched. Over the past months, Kathryn has been giving new life to garments–nipping, tucking, revamping, redesigning and tailoring them to fit Amy.

Does your town have a tailor and if so, have you ever taken a garment there? In previous decades, tailors or mantua makers were an essential part of the community.

“The early dress-makers were known as mantua-makers. Their work was supplemented by the seamstress and the tailoress. In “Recollections of Old Boston” a woman born in 1848 states, “All dresses were made in the household; the stuffs were bought in the shops…” “Sewing-women came to the house, and worked as seamstresses do today, but these women not only made the dresses for the women and girls of the household, but a tailoress came also who made the coats and trousers for the boys.” “One good dress of silk or satin or damask for best (which usually lasted for many years) and a very meagre wardrobe of gowns for daily use.”

Marla Miller describes the ‘interconnectedness’ of communities in her book, The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution:

“In the give and take of rural exchange, New England needleworkers, as much as cabinetmakers, housewrights, and headstone carvers, created and sustained communities of commerce imperative to the continued health of that equilibrium, to systems as important to continuity and change in the social, economic, and cultural order as that which existed in the larger commercial world.”

The Tailor Project is both a small town and global project. DuFault seeks to bring attention to the way our clothing is made (“…garment workers rights, fast fashion, toxic effluents in the waterways, textile waste, pesticides…”) and by whom. She invokes “…a call to arms for old friends, new friends and colleagues to join in supporting their local tailor, a profession being pushed out for cheaply made and priced clothing that are much easier to throw away than to mend.”

Aren’t our closets filled to the brim? Take on Amy’s challenge, ‘shop’ in your closet, visit your tailor and sport a garment, perhaps “used” and then fitted for you. Moreover, when purchasing any new item, take note of where and who made it, and only buy from designers that support fair trade and wages. Changes in the industry and our habits start with us, one garment at time.

 

b(RE)ce for The Tailor Project

b(RE)ce for The Tailor Project

NOTE:  Recently, I participated in two Tailor Projects. First, Kathryn shortened a dress purchased in a thrift store years ago, but I had only worn once or twice due to its length. Now, it is one of my summer go-to dresses. Secondly, I eco-dyed a silk shirt for Amy, dyeing it with natural dyes.  This shirt falls into a project that I have been working on for the past two years–b(RE)ce:  the revamping of thrift store garments through the act of eco-dyeing (using homemade natural dyes with hand gathered leaves and flowers).

Elsa Shannon Bowles, Homespun Handicrafts, (Benjamin Bloom, Inc, 1972), pgs. 108-9.

Marla Miller,  The Needles Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution, (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), pgs. 228-9.  Miller thoroughly examines the global trade world in the last chapter, The Romance of Old Clothes.

Amy DuFault, http://www.amydufault.com/?p=137529, Read on 8/8/2104.


bundle up

Category : Textiles
Date : January 19, 2014

With the next polar vortex bearing down on us, it is time to gather one’s warmest clothes and prepare to bundle up for the daily chores—fire stoking, chicken feeding, wood chopping, egg gathering.  What did the women of yore wear in the bitter winter?

Recently, I saw a painting of Mrs. Richard Bache (Sarah Franklin, 1743-1808–Ben Franklin’s daughter) wearing a crisscrossed shawl and it occurred to me that shawls for women were the equivalent of waistcoats for men.

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A shawl—a very large triangle—worn over the shoulders and crossed over the chest, can be tied in the back.  The shawl is now secure and one does not have to concentrate on holding it closed or worrying about it falling off.  Thus, one is able to move about freely and accomplish needed tasks.  Furthermore, the trunk of the body is warm, just as if one was wearing a modern day vest.

In the recent movie, Camille Claudel 1915, Camille (played by Juliette Binoche) wears a very large shawl, and throughout the movie, the shawl takes on many uses—as a large scarf bundled around her neck, as a shawl draped over the shoulders, and as a ‘waistcoat’ wrapped and tied around her waist.  In contrast, the character Griet, in the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring, merely drapes her shawl around her and holds it closed with her arms, thus not allowing the body freedom of movement.

After seeing Juliette wrap, drape and enfold her body with her knitted shawl, I decided to make one.  I discussed this with one of my colleagues and fellow knitters, and there was a twinkle in her eye.  The next day she brought me the perfect pattern—‘A Sensible Shawl’ by Celeste Young.  My shawl, finished just in time for the last polar vortex, has been keeping me warm as I move through the day’s chores and at night whilst I am knitting socks or stitching my Alabama Chanin DIY swing skirt.

Wrap up and keep warm.

Mrs. Richard Bache, 1793, by John Hopper (British, 1758-1810), oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art


town meeting

Category : Textiles
Date : November 20, 2013

Recently, we had a special town meeting.  In the state of Massachusetts, towns having less than 6,000 citizens utilize the open town meeting format.  The warrant for our town’s first town meeting was issued on January 11, 1733.  Our annual town meeting occurs every May, where we vote on the yearly town budget and other matters in the form of articles (in modern terms, we vote on the budget line item by line item).  In this instance, the Board of Selectmen issued a special warrant that listed three articles and summoned the town to a meeting to vote.

The meeting was charged with energy, for the articles were surrounded by contentious debate.  I packed my knitting, knowing that it would be a long evening, and indeed it lasted almost four hours.  There were a few other knitters in the crowd.

my stocking, Brece Honeycutt work on paper, 2007

my stocking, Brece Honeycutt work on paper, 2007

Idle hands are the devils playground, or so it is said.  And I was happy to have my knitting to occupy mine.  My mind time travelled and I wondered what women of the past would have done at a town meeting.  Women would probably not have gone to a colonial town meeting, since they did not have the right to vote.  However, most women would have carried their handwork with them wherever they ventured for hands were never idle.  According to Larissa and Martin Brown in their book, Knitalong, everyone knitted.  “Some families had a quota that girls and boys needed to finish each day—an inch of sock or even a half a sock.”  Furthermore, women often worked together in the form of “bees” in order to get fiber chores completed.

“After I was married and the children were growing up, I was never without a pair of needles in my hands,” reminisced Elizabeth E. Miller, born in 1848 in South Ryegate, Vermont, when she was interviewed by a government folklorist at ninety years of age. “When I went out to a sociable or a farmer’s meeting in the evening I always took my knitting.  We had a spanking pair [of horses] then and when we were out in the  [wagon] I knit up the hill and down…my knitting went everywhere but to church.”

As a child, I watched my grandmother knit and stitch in the evenings after the daylight chores were completed.  I thank her for her inspiration, for her hands were never idle.

Lillian E. Preiss, Sheffield Frontier Town, (Sheffield Bicentennial Committee, 1976), pgs. 19-20.

Larissa Brown and Martin John Brown, Knitalong Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together, (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2008), pg., 44, 45.


needlework

Category : Textiles
Date : November 13, 2013

My grandmother and mother worked with their hands and made beautiful embroideries and needlepoint textiles.  When I was a child, they encouraged me to pick up the needle, and for a time, I embroidered on my jeans but always found that the thread became tangled; I quickly became frustrated.  Perhaps I did not ‘love my thread’ enough, as Natalie Chanin instructs one to do.

This weekend, Historic Deerfield embarks on a new program “which connects careful object looking with artistic project making.”  For this, participants will examine linen textiles from the collection, learn about production, and embroider one of their own.

The process of looking at older objects and gaining inspiration from them is not new to Deerfield.  In her book Poetry to the Earth: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Deerfield, Suzanne L. Flynt documents the founding of the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework, by Margaret Whiting and Ellen Miller, in 1896.  Whiting and Miller established a village industry and “employed up to thirty local women to stitch embroideries that were inspired by colonial New England embroideries found in the local historical society.”   Patterns from the colonial women flourished on the new textiles—Lucy’s acanthus leaf, Aunt Beck’s fantastical flowers, vines and pears, Polly Wright’s Parrot, and Ruth Culver Coleman’s carnations, for example.  The embroideries produced by Society of Blue and White were prized not only for the materials used (fine linen cloth and hand dyed linen floss) and the interpreted designs, but also for the quality of the stitches executed by the women.

Whiting and Miller also collected stories about the women who made the colonial embroideries and included both the name and a story with each newly embroidered piece.  The bed hangings of Lucy Lane (1752-1803) were the first embroideries to provide inspiration: “Part of a set of linen tent Bed Curtains and Counterpane carded, spun, woven and bleached by Lucy Lane.  She also made and dyed the floss and embroidered the whole in 1760-1765.”

The Society of Blue and White Needlework strikes me as similar to the contemporary cottage industry of Alabama Chanin, previously described in my blog post ‘duds’ of September 19, 2013.

My thanks to the stitchers of the past and present for their continued inspiration to me as I seek to stitch without tangled threads.

 

Suzanne L. Flynt, foreword by Wendy Kaplan, Poetry to the Earth The Arts and Crafts Movement in Deerfield, (Hard Press Editions, 2012), pgs 11, 85, 84, 90, 88.

Historic Deerfield’s Art and Craft : Embroidered Linen, November 15, 11am-1pm. For information contact their website.

Note:  For an in depth view of the life of Aunt Beck aka Rebecca Dickinson, read the newly published book by  Marla R. Miller , Rebecca Dickinson: independence for a New England woman, Westview Press, 2014.


ursula cutt

Category : Textiles
Date : September 27, 2013

Set your sails for Portsmouth, NH this weekend and plan to be in attendance at the historic John Paul Jones house for the 11am talk– When a Bed Sheet Cost More than a Cow:  Textiles in the Inventory of Urusla Cutt.

How in the world, one wonders, could a bed sheet (not even a set of sheets)  ‘cost more than a cow’?  Today one can find an entire set of sheets starting at  $19.99, and a milking cow might cost upwards of $1,200.00.

Madame Ursula Cutt, the former wife of John Cutt, President of the Province of New Hampshire, was murdered on her Portsmouth farm by the Abenaki Indians in 1694.  The customary probate inventory “allows us to rummage among her belongings, at least in imagination” reports Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in her book Good Wives.   Ulrich surmises that Cutt was a ‘gentlewoman’ due to the list of items she owned, including:  “fine wrought Coverings for Cushions not made up,” “wearing linen,” and “remnants of old silk and several small swatches of silver lace.”  The Saturday talk will “examine the types of household linens and clothing she owned, addressing which were imported and which were made in New Hampshire.”

detail of cotton 'Palampore' made in India, first quarter of 18th century

detail of cotton ‘Palampore’ made in India, first quarter of 18th century

Perhaps your next port of call will be ‘New Amsterdam’ to view Interwoven Globe:  The Worldwide Textile Trade 1500-1800 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (until January 5, 2014).  The fascinating and breathtaking exhibition of over 150 textiles traces the ‘cloth’ trade around the globe via maritime routes.  Splendors of cross-pollination are evident in the tendrils that are intertwined on the gallery walls on numerous Palampores (large pieces of cloth typically used for either a wall hanging or bed/table cover).  The last gallery is filled with examples of cloth imported into the Colonies from the East India Company.  The wall text states, “Readily available in both large city shops and small country stores, these so-called East India Goods also served as an important source of inspiration for decorative textiles made in North America.” Perhaps Cutt purchased some intricate East Indian cotton and placed it in her chest of drawers, later to be inventoried and left for us to “rummage”.

For a thorough examination of the murder of Cutt, reference the recent article by the historian and author J. Dennis Robinson:

http://www.seacoastnh.com/History/History-Matters/Unraveling-the-1694-Murder-of-Ursula-Cutt/

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: image and reality in the lives of women in northern New England, 1650-1750, (Vintage Books, 1982), pg. 72.


duds

Category : Textiles
Date : September 19, 2013

Alabama Chanin makes garments and each piece is stitched by hand by “artisans working in their own homes and businesses using a modern cottage industry method of manufacturing.”  Much care is taken with each piece and the details are stunning–the stitching, the beading, the embroidery.  In a recent workshop, Natalie Chanin stated they were “making garments for generations.  When someone buys one today, her granddaughter will wear it and will want to wear it.”

To our throwaway culture, this is very much a radical idea–passing along garments for generations.  However, during the colonial times articles of clothing were listed in probate records.  In her book, Two Centuries of Costume in America, Alice Morse Earle traces the lineage of clothes:

“Many persons preferred to keep their property in the form of what they quaintly called “duds.”  The fashion did not wear out more apparel than the man; for clothing, no matter what the cut, was worn as long as it lasted, doing service frequently through generations.  For instance, we find Mrs. Epes, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, when she was over fifty years old, receiving this bequest by will: “If she desire to have the suit of damask which was the Lady Cheynies her grandmother, let her have it upon appraisement.”  I have traced a certain flowered satin gown and “manto” in four wills; a dame to her daughter; she to her sister; then to the child of the last-named who was a granddaughter of the first owner. And it was a proud possession to the last.  The fashions and shapes did not change yearly.”

Not only was a garment expensive to make, but the cloth itself was a dear commodity.  People often did not own many garments.  Marla R. Miller inventories the colonial wardrobe of Rebecca Dickinson (1738-1815):

“The wardrobe of a woman whose family’s economic status, like Rebecca’s, might be called “middling”–that is, neither especially well off nor especially poor–contained perhaps three to six shifts (the long, light gown that served as the century’s foundation garment); two or three petticoats; three under petticoats or skirts, sometimes quilted in silk or wool or made of linen and wool blends (such as linsey-woolsey); a number of “short gowns” (more akin to today’s blouse than a gown, this was the everyday working shirt of the era); a cloak or cloaks; and assorted caps, kerchiefs, and aprons.”

Storage units across America are filled to the brim with unworn unused clothing, and countless factory workers in developing countries are frantically working to keep chain stores filled with the latest fad.  The time is ripe for us to take up our needle and thread and begin to make garments that last, and to mend those that may be showing signs of wear and tear.  As I stitch my DIY skirt, I will think of Rebecca Dickinson and other revolutionaries that forged the path for us.

Alabama Chanin website, http://alabamachanin.com/women, (September 2013)

Alice Morse Earle, Two Centuries of Costume in America MDCXX-MDCCCXX Volume 1 (The MacMillan Company, 1903), pgs 10-11.

Marla R. Miller, Rebecca Dickinson: independence for a New England Woman (Westview Press, 2014), pgs. 25-26.


back-to-school

Category : Textiles
Date : September 16, 2013

It is back-to-school season, and off I traveled to Woodstock, NY for a one-day workshop with Natalie Chanin.  Even though Natalie’s three books generously give one the needed information to make her garments, it was daunting to me to make a piece of clothing from scratch.  Now, after a day spent receiving instructions from the Alabama Chanin team – Natalie and Oliva – as well as the exchange of information from fellow stitchers, I am confident that I can move forward with constructing the four-panel skirt.

all hands at work

all hands at work

We sat around a long table in a beautifully renovated barn structure, listened, stitched, and scribed notes.  Natalie talked of quilters and artisans that have sewn clothing for hundreds of years.  My grandmother taught me both to embroider and to sew by machine.  Regrettably, I let these skills go by the wayside and am now working to regain them.

work kit provided by Alabama Chanin

my Alabama Chanin DIY kit with all needed tools

Had I been born in 1738 like Rebecca Dickinson, sewing would have been second nature, and in fact might even have provided me with a livelihood as it did for her as a gownmaker.  Thankfully, Dickinson left a diary and Marla Miller uses this primary source for her newly published book, Rebecca Dickinson: independence for a New England woman.

Here Miller discusses education, both book learning and practical knowledge, for Dickinson and other young girls:

“Able to both read and write with ease, she was part of a longer-term trend that would encompass ever-larger numbers of women in eighteenth-century Massachusetts.  She appears to have been at the forefront of it and likely possessed greater skill than many of her female neighbors.”

“The curriculum made available to girls was only part of the training that prepared them for adulthood.  Women worked at all manner of occupations, generally following a course set out on larger family lines.  The daughter of a midwife might well become a midwife; a girl who was raised in her parent’s tavern might find herself running a tavern as an adult……Women in colonial cities had a wider range of options than those in rural places, but women everywhere found work in the clothing trades (as tailors, gownmakers, seamstresses, or milliners), healing occupations (as midwives or nurses), cloth production (as weavers, spinners, or fullers), and in other areas of the economy.“

I imagine that if Dickinson had taken her writing skills one step further and written books like Natalie Chanin, we would have the exact patterns for the gowns that she made.  In the meantime, we can be thankful that Dickinson left us with her considered words, that Miller has made them accessible to us, and that Chanin is helping spark renewed interest in the handmade garment.

Alabama Chanin handstitched fabric swatches

Alabama Chanin handstitched fabric swatches

NOTE:  Alabama Chanin is located in Florence, AL and has an online shop. However, if you live in the northeast and  want to purchase the organic cotton fabric and other tools needed in person, visit the incredibly beautiful new store Sew Woodstock located in Bearsville, NY.

Marla Miller, Rebecca Dickinson Independence for a New England Woman, edited by Carol Berkin (Westview Press, 2014), pgs. 22-23.


samplers

Category : Textiles
Date : June 7, 2013

Detective work: that is the process used by savvy historians Dan and Marty Campanelli to trace the young girls that embroidered each sampler in their recently published book, “A Sampling of Hunterdon County Needlework: The Motifs, the Makers & Their Stories”  (Hunterdon County Historical Society).

Girls were taught the skills of stitching and also learned alphabets and words through their needlework.  They would sign and date their samplers by stitching their names, often cleverly placed amongst the architectural elements, hymn verses, lacy landscapes, flourishes of flowers, prancing animals and poems.

Elisabeth Day Hall (1772-1858) Needlework Sampler, courtesy Stan & Carol Huber

Elisabeth Day Hall (1772-1858) Needlework Sampler, courtesy Stan & Carol Huber

Now is the time for me to do my own detective work and search the local historical societies for samplers yielding the names of the women and their daughters that lived here– Taphenes Cande, Abigail Andrews, Lucretia E. Tuller, Mary A. Tuller, Sarah L Gordon, Elizabeth M. Noxon & Eleanora T. Hayes.


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