Textiles

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

My grandmother stored her extra quilts in the attic, folded, with the plain side facing out, stacked almost to the ceiling on top of an old trunk.  As a child, I sneaked upstairs and unfolded each quilt, reveling in the combination of  the vibrant textiles and intricate designs. I have always thought that I “leanrt” color theory and patterning from staring at her exquisitely stitched quilts. We slept underneath starbursts, double wedding rings and simple ladder patterns.

basket quilt circa 1860

So, it was a lucky happenstance that I found “Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts at the Brooklyn Museum.  The wall text states:

The divisive Civil War (1861-1865), followed by the country’s Centennial and rapid changes introduced by emancipation and industrialization produced a nostalgic longing in the late nineteenth century for all things “olde tyme.”  The resulting Colonial Revival lasted from the 1860 through the early twentieth century and celebrated the founding fathers’ ways of life   ……Quilts were embraced by women as emblematic of this simpler, bygone era, and of their idealized colonial foremothers creating beauty from the wilderness.

Contemporary scholarship, however, has found that colonial period quilts are rare and were generally owned by elite families and stitched from expensive imported fabric.  It was the Colonial Revival itself that first made quilts a popular, quintessentially American endeavor, encouraging middle-class women to take it up as a hobby.

touching stars quilt circa 1850

Ironically, my grandmother hung her quilt frame from the kitchen ceiling and lowered it when she needed to work, and upon it she pieced irresistible patchworks to keep her family warm.  I am lucky to have a few of her works and use them, continually amazed by patterns, forms and colors.

Yesterday, I took a pair of shoes to the cobbler for repair. Today, I mended a pair of trousers and took two typewriters to see if they could be fixed.

Mend, fix, repair.

The cobbler’s shop was over flowing with pairs of shoes needing work.  And Gramercy Typewriter’s office was stacked with typewriters in their cases awaiting cleaning, tune-ups, new rollers and ribbons.  I wonder if there are stacks of clothes in people’s closets just waiting for the sewing needle?

Abigail May Alcott felt strongly that women should be able to wield the tool of the needle.  We finally are able to read the diary entries and letters of Alcott thanks to the new publication by Eve LaPlante, My Heart is Boundless:  Writings of Abigail May Alcott Louisa’s Mother.  Luckily, one can either listen to Abigail’s words on CD or read them in book form. Either format, the solid foreward thoughts of Alcott ring true. Here is an excerpt from “Fragments of Reports While Visitor to the Poor, 1849-1850.”  She was constantly thinking of ways for women to earn an income.

I am desirous of suggesting also a sewing class to meet Wednesday afternoon.  Our public schools overlook this part of the female education or they leave it wholly unprovided for. Many a girl can wield a pen or calculate a sum, who can do nothing with a needle , that little instrument, so important to a woman through her life, indeed almost the only tool vouchsafed to her, but which she can obtain a subsistence. The free and skillful use of that leads to habits of patient industry, to order and neatness.  They might be taught to mend the garments and sew for the charity basket.  Teach them to hem-gauge, hem, make buttonholes, and darn stockings.

Reading and writing are important to every human being but sewing is an indispensible art.

Text from My Heart is Boundless:  Writings of Abigail May Alcott Louisa’s Mother, edited by Eve LaPlante, (Free Press, NY, 2012), p 173.