When I first told my mother I was planning on taking a sewing
class (registered under home economics) she scoffed at the idea.
My friends were also confused. “That is so girly, so retro,” they
quipped, rolling their eyes. But to me it was anything but girly.
It was independence. No malls, no hoarding my allowance to buy
the same shirt that every other girl had—just a few yards of fabric
and my own ingenuity.
After dabbling in boxer shorts and pajama bottoms, my most
ambitious project came my senior year of high school in the form
of a snakeskin dress worn with a jewel-encrusted bra boldly peeking
out of its plunging neckline. Dolce & Gabbana had released a simi-
lar item on the runway that season and I was determined to wear
my own version of this fanciful undergarment to my senior prom.
Night after night, for three weeks straight, I sat on my living room
couch hand sewing one rhinestone after the next onto an Old Navy
bikini top, clocking in over 30 hours of meticulous stitching. When
I was done, not one bit of black spandex showed through the flock
of rhinestones, and it appeared almost identical to its $10,000 coun-
terpart. And so, while most girls arrived at this special night decked
out with a date on one arm and a corsage on the other, I arrived stag
looking like a cross between a Judith Leiber purse and a naughty
Fabergd egg.
Despite the fact that the final ensemble weighed about eight
pounds and elicited epic stares and utter confusion from both my
parents and fellow students, I walked into the party with my head
held high, proud of my creation. This was a far cry from my grand-
mother’s handmade quilts and needlepoint pillows, but then again,
those items had been my gateway to the craft. In my own fashion-
ably questionable way, I wanted to pay homage to this tradition,
while at the same time chipping away at it.
My grandmother’s sewing circle, comprising 12 college-educated
Indianapolis housewives, met each Tuesday at 2 p.m. over coffee,
sweets and sewing. The group formed in 1941 and continued until
too few members remained or their hands were too arthritic and
fingers too knobby to grip a needle.
With such a vivid introduction, I have tried to understand why
my mother never took up the craft and, moreover, never had the
desire to do so. What I have learned is this: My grandmother had
one acceptable choice, to stay at home. My mother, who came of
age amid the tumult of the 1960s and feminism’s second wave, had
choices, and a point to prove. I have choices, too. However, they
are different from both my grandmother’s and my mother’s. And
I choose to sew.
In i960, my mother’s sophomore year of high school, eight out
of ten white married women did not work. This included my grand-
mother, who had her degree from Butler University but left her job
as a social worker when she married my grandfather. For my mother
this was never an option. She didn’t regard herself as a feminist—to
her the term carried a stigma. But she reacted to her times, fleeing
from its restrictions. This included handcrafts, which were almost
exclusively practiced by women. And against my mother’s nontradi-
tionalist life, I would stage a rejection of my own. I would find
meaning, relevance and my own rebellion in embracing what my
mother had rejected.
For other crafters, a similar narrative unfolded. Faythe Levine,
author, curator and director of
Handmade Nation,
a film about the >
dec/jan 10 american craft 049
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