Beauty or the Bad Rap

One of my favorite hobbies (and I have many) is embroidery. I love working with the colors, how the thread feels as it slips through my fingers, and watching a textured picture developing as I work.

Unfortunately embroidery gets a bad rap in the U.S. Part of this is because it takes time. “What, I won’t finish this tonight? Or even this weekend?” Which is a silly reason not to try something. Not that I’m completely opposed to quick projects, I frequently do quick projects, but why shouldn’t creating a work of art take some time?

The other reason I hear people demeaning embroidery is the image of ladies sitting around in extravagant and hard to move in gowns, trying to find something to keep the busy while the men were off crusading and having adventures. Which is silly and just shows that history is not being taught properly in U.S. schools.

Granted, embroidery was an occupation for wealthy women, but that was due to expense of materials. Once upon a time – hundreds of years ago – they didn’t have machines to spin thread or weave cloth. It had to be done by hand, taking months to create enough cloth for one set of clothes. So even plain fabrics were expensive. Dyes were also hand produced and many had to be imported from far away places, which made colored thread or fabric even more expensive. A person had to be pretty well off to afford a piece of fabric and colored thread to create something just to be pretty.

The other thing the wealthy had was time. The time to do something so frivolous as working on something just to be looked at. Hundreds of years ago most women started their day before dawn just to be able to cook breakfast. They carried in wood for the fires to keep the home warm, spent hours leaning over a wood stove or open fire to cook, hauled water in from outdoors, scrubbed floors on hands and knees, and washed clothes and dishes by plunging their hands into nearly boiling water – no nice rubber gloves to protect the skin. They tended animals, pulled weeds, and preserved food to get through the winter months without starving to death. Any sewing or knitting the middle or lower class women or girls did was done between other chores, or in the winter months by women who knew that they’d be picking out thorns or scrubbing out fish scales every laundry day until the garment fell to bits. Not to mention what all those woolen socks must have smelled like after being worn for hours of work in the fields under the hot sun, or to muck out animal shelters.

Of course every female during that time dreamed of having servants to do the scrubbing, weeding, hauling, and hard labor so she could sit in a comfortable, well lit room, working with soft, finely spun thread and fine cloth to stitch something that would be cherished and cared for.

So much for a boring occupation for ladies sitting around while the men had adventures.

 

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