Notes from The Subversive Stitch

All direct quotes.  P12

' The subject matter of a woman's embroidery during the 18th and 19th c was as important as its execution in affirming her femininity (and thus her worth and worthlessness in the world's eyes).  ... If the content conformed to the ideal, it supposedly won the needlewoman love, admiration and support.

' The iconography of women's work is rarely given the serious consideration it deserves.  Embroidery is all too often treated only in terms of technical developments.  On reason why the subject matter of embroidery is summarily dismissed is that embroiderers employ patterns.  ... Needlewomen chose particular patterns, selecting those images which had meaning for them.   The interpretation .... of the pattern is an integral aspect of the activity  ... and needlewomen ... select[ed]those images which had meaning for them.  ... They had specific importance and powerful resonance for the women who chose them ... (The modern viewer) can perceive what could not could not be stitched by women and how they were able to make meanings of their own.

'Sometimes embroiders reinforced the feminine ideal ... At other times they resisted or questioned the emerging ideology of feminine obedience and subjugation.  ...

P13
'Such overt recognition of the cash between individual ambition and the ideology of femininity is rare indeed.  ... Why [these embroiderers] selected such subjects, what secondary gains they accrued from conformity to the feminine ideal, and how they were able to make meanings of their own.

P14
'The stereotype of embroidery as a vain and frivolous occupation, like the stereotype of the silent, seductive needlewoman, ... undermines the power and pleasure women have found in embroidery.

Chapter 5 p83
'Embroidery... waste inculcate obedience and patience during long hours spent sitting still, head bowed over an increasingly technically complex, demanding art.

p85
'16th century samplers had been broad linen rectangles.  ... 17th century samplers were educational exercises in stitchery - individual tests of skill, rather than store houses of motifs.  ... The long band samplers were usually stitched in progressively harder exercises.  The first bands would be devoted to coloured border patterns - stylised flowers and alphabets in silks.  Often the colour would disappear in bands of whitework embroidery.  ... The alphabets too had a practical application.  The increasingly affluent households of the 17th century 'marked' their newly acquired household linens.

p86
'Signatures and dates appear on samplers in the late 16th century ... related to the rise of individualism to the Reformation and the ideology of Protestantism.

p88
'The father assumed a new importance in the hierarchy of authority.  ...  The importance of parental discipline increased with the advent of Protestantism.  ... The church was tending to lose ground to the domestic hearth.  ... The advent of samplers with embroidered pledges of obedience the mother or father ... signifies the changes.

p89
'The biblical scenes selected for pictorial embroidery depict parental power at its most absolute and violent. Jephta's taught and the sacrifice of Isaac were commonly depicted.

p90
'Embroidery as an education in femininity crossed religious and political boundaries.  ... An important aspect of aristocratic life - thus, for many puritans pious subject matter could not erase the art's association with vanity and decadence.  So, paradoxically white they promoted it as a defence against idleness it was also castigated as evidence of idleness. ... Embroidery was to prepare upper and middle class girls for their place as wives occupied with 'housewifery'.

p95
'In the 17th century ... Flowers and animals embroidered ... may be royalist symbols.  ... The lion, stag and leopard ... were supporters of the royal arms.  Floral motifs in Stuart embroidery ... content of mediaeval embroidery had revolved around reproduction and childbirth.

p96
'... Symbols of the Virgin's fertility lived on in women's work.  A spray ... with one full flower and a bud symbolised the mother and child, fruit in a basket and a lily in a pot were traditional associated with the Annunciation.  The flower pot of the Annunciation was worked in the crown of a baby's bonnet. ... The stitching of the symbol of the Annunciation on babies' clothes suggests that embroiderers knew what they were doing.

'OT subjects - David and Bathsheba; Susanna and the Elders.  Heroic act by women, triumphing over evil...

p98
'Amateur embroiders ignored the women who tempted and destroyed men in favour of Judith or Esther, whose acts of courage saved their people.  (This fits with my work - focus on the positives of women).  Stories about women's power within marriage were popular - Esther who successfully interceded with her husband Ahasuerus on behalf of her people the Jews.  Esther was often invoked to symbolise a persecuted minority.

P102
'Embroiders employed the needle, not the pen - they left no records of their attitudes towards their subject matter.  We cannot claim them as proto-feminists.   .... They embroidered those who reflected well on their sex... Embroiders throughout history were rarely in the vanguard of the fight for women's rights - but it is in their work that we can see reflected the constraints and contradictions that drove some women to speak out.

p103
'1659 Embroidery became the object to attack for the women who spoke out against the constraints fo femininity.  This was regrettable.  Embroidery was no more innately feminine than are women; it had simply become part of the construction of femininity.

p104
'1675 Teacher Wooley's inclusion of ... embroidery in her curriculum was pragmatic; both a tactic to make education for girls acceptable, and a tool for producing the characteristics she deemed necessary for women within marriage.

p107
'17th c - the advent of children's education in femininity through sampler making.  Charity schools spread and the education of working class girls, like that of upper and middle class girls, included the stitching of samplers.

p108
'The future pattern of professional work began to be established.  Working class women were employed as sweated labour in trades associated with embroidery and middle class women became embroiderers because the craft's aristocratic and feminine associations made it an acceptable occupation.


p136
'In the US, an embroidered mourning picture followed a sampler as the next stage in a girl's education. ... Embroidery was taught in emulation of European habits.

p139
Mary Wollstonecraft The Vindication of the Right of Women 'Identifying needlework as a prime agent in the construction of femininity, summarised "this employment contracts their faculties more than any other by confining their thoughts to their persons"..."moreover it renders the majority of own sickly ... and false notions of female excellence make them proud of this delicacy".