The threads of our lives: Sandra Miesel on how women as diverse as Mary Queen of Scots and Armenian orphans have let their fingers do the talking

Women's Quarterly, Spring, 2002 by Sandra Miesel

THE FATES knew it, the Valiant Woman of the Bible knew it, and countless pioneer women in America knew it: Women and thread go together. Because fiber has been part of our lives for at least 25,000 years, our history could be written in thread as well as ink. Of course, what women knotted, stitched, or wove with those threads has varied so wildly across time that no more than a few small swatches can be stitched together here.

Needlework has long been an occasion for sociability. It seals the bond between mothers and daughters and among friends. The old-time quilting bee is well remembered, although most quilts were actually solo products. The spinning bee, an evening gathering for work and gossip in early modern France and Germany, was so much fun that clergymen objected. They feared that women away from their homes at night must be up to no good.

Items of handmade needlework remain customary gifts for friends and family. They're a favorite expression of charity, whether socks for soldiers, layettes for poor infants, or afghans for the homeless. Thread holds memories, for instance in the friendship album quilt, a collective gift where each square was made and signed by a different woman.

Needlework also has provided solace for women who could control their fibers but not their fate. Needlepoint was "occupational therapy" for Mary Queen of Scots during her long captivity. (She encoded subversive messages into her needlepoint. A cat she embroidered had ginger fur not unlike Elizabeth's red hair and toyed with a poor mouse. A treasonous emblem of a heavenly hand pruning away a barren branch--Elizabeth--sent the Duke of Norfolk, with whom Mary was negotiating marriage, to his death.) Brave Armenian women and girls kept on making lace while their people literally were being slaughtered in the streets outside. American women doggedly stitched their way through the Depression.

Because spinning is the quintessential female activity, Eve was often portrayed as a spinner. The Valiant Woman of Proverbs worked with willing hands and was thus the ideal Hebrew wife: a skilled craftswoman who produced for both home and market. This provident needleworker used her earnings to buy a vineyard.

As the New Eve, the Virgin Mary was supposedly spinning precious scarlet and purple wool for the Temple when Gabriel came calling. In art the Virgin spins, winds wool, weaves, embroiders, and knits--always superbly. An angel even brings her food and drink while she weaves in one late medieval German painting. The tools she is seen using tell us what implements were available to women in the past. For instance, scissors first appear in her workbasket in paintings around 1400.

Of course, these charming pictures don't reflect the reality faced by medieval and early modern toilers in the fiber trades: No angels brought them snacks. Needle skills were admired in ladies of leisure--matrons of means, nuns, and thrifty housewives--but not in women who had to support themselves. Men who wove or stitched could eke out a living, but women couldn't. They were conveniently rated as unskilled artisans.

Although women couldn't live on needlework alone, they could bring in extra money with it. As supplementary income it was important to the "economy of expedients" that kept many poor families alive. That's why educational schemes for impoverished females emphasized stitchery. Irish crocheted lace, Clare embroidery (floral embellishment in colored thread for garments), and Ayrshire whitework (an exquisite form of white-on-white embroidery) were invented to support starving women in nineteenth-century Great Britain. This century has seen Armenian orphans knotting lace, Appalachians sewing quilts, Peruvians knitting sweaters, and many others set to work through charitable initiatives.

Not surprisingly, some poor women decided to turn to prostitution instead of stitchery. Then, by sad irony, prostitutes confined to the London workhouses or the Magdalen Refuges in Europe were taught fibercrafts--the very skill that hadn't been able to keep them from the street in the first place.

The relentless stitching that filled Victorian homes with knickknacks of dubious merit made another kind of statement. Such needlework was the fruit of "useful leisure" and carried an implicit boast about middle-class ease and privilege. All those meticulously made flowerpot covers, tea cozies, hair-receivers, and dust cloth holders proclaimed that the makers had ample time on their hands.

Humbler folk have also used needlework to advertise their gentility. The Pennsylvania Dutch used to hang a "show towel," a masterpiece of stitched linen, in front of the rough towel actually used to dry hands. Italian immigrants in America accumulated fine handmade bed linens, their sign of prosperity, despite disapproval by Progressive Era social workers, who thought this a waste of time.

Throughout history, women have stitched patriotic and political messages into their wares. One familiar example is Dickens' Madame Defarge, knitting into her handiwork the names of those she dooms to the guillotine. During the American Revolution, women produced flags and patriotic motifs and often refused to use imported British fabric. Homespun garb was worn even by the wealthy as a political statement.