Every time I pick up my embroidery, I connect myself to personal and societal histories of making, feminism, and protest. I pick up my needle and floss, and my actions mirror those of so many before me, drawing on the traditions of the craft and the persistent societal narratives around needlework.
An embroidery pattern from Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1861.
Stitching, especially stitching done for decorative purposes, has often been dismissed as a frivolous feminine domestic art, a framing that devalues the skill and creativity needed to produce embroidered works. But any study of historical works of embroidery reveals that it has never been a “mere” decorative art. In addition to evoking a personal connection to history, a piece of embroidery can reveal information about the social status, politics, identity, community, and even the personal experiences of the artist who created it.
Sashiko was originally used to join multiple pieces of fabric.
At its most basic, embroidery is the art of stitching designs onto fabric with a needle. The particulars of technique and material have changed over time, and continue to vary greatly around the world. Embroidery is always decorative, though it can have an explicitly functional element, as with Japanese sashiko embroidery. While embroidery can now be produced by machine on an industrial scale, this piece will explore decorative embroidery produced by hand, primarily in the Anglo-American tradition.
Regardless of its historical or cultural particulars, the skills of embroidery have traditionally been passed down through families and communities. This transmission of knowledge was often connected to gender roles and kinship ties. In the nineteenth century, embroidery was taught to middle- and upper-class young women, alongside other arts and academic subjects, as a way to demonstrate feminine qualities and reinforce a woman’s suitability for marriage. In my case, my mom did try to teach me to cross stitch, one of the simplest and most common forms of stitching, when I was around ten. It failed horribly. As an adult, I learned to embroider by using YouTube videos and websites created by individual embroiderers around the world. Contemporary technology, certainly, but in the service of long-standing traditions.
“Mary Pearsey Aged 9 the year 1842”
Embroidery can be seen as a double-edged needle. It was used both to reinforce ideas of femininity and domesticity and to challenge those same notions. In The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, Rozika Parker argues that while “embroidery has been the means of educating women into the feminine …it has also provided a weapon of resistance to the constraints of femininity.”1
Moreover, this perception of embroidery as a purely-feminine practice ignores the many men and non-binary folks who have embroidered as part of their work and personal lives. For example, Nadia Albertini has spoken about how decorative embroidery in high fashion was primarily done by male designers for many years, highlighting the way that the value placed on these skills could depend on who the stitching was for—and who was doing the stitching.
Both history and craft can be deeply personal. Works of embroidery can provide glimpses into the lives of individuals who might not have left written records of their lives, and whose histories have not been preserved in archival records or national narratives. A single embroidery sampler found in a museum collection might be the only remaining connection to the lived experience of a young woman.2
Unfinished embroidery sampler created by Patty Hubbard, ca. 1850. McCord Museum, M4577. Used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA license.
For example, the McCord Museum holds a number of embroidery pieces created by school girls and young women in the 1800s. Embroidery done by young women can provide information about where women lived, family history (including names prior to marriage), and in some cases details significant family events such as death, illness, or marriage. These family milestones might never have been noted in official records, or such records may not have survived to be accessible for contemporary historians. Or these milestones may have become disassociated with the birth name of a woman, making embroidery a vital source for historians studying a culture in which women have long been expected to change their last names upon marriage.
But the historical association of embroidery with the feminine has led many to overlook its history as a subversive medium. In addition to being a record of daily life, an embroidered work may have been one of the only places a young woman could safely voice subversive statements and resist forms of patriarchy. One only need to look at Instagram, Pinterest, and Etsy to find a huge number of modern examples of embroidery as a form of feminist resistance. I have found delight in using embroidery to swear and make political statements. But this is just as much a part of the history of embroidery as the French knot.
An embroidered text-only sampler held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, for instance, shows resistance embedded in a textile. Created by Elizabeth Parker in the 19th century, this piece of embroidery recounts her life and includes a deeply personal reflection on the abuse she suffered at the hand of her employers. It begins:
As i cannot write I put this down simply and freely as I might speak to a person whose intimacy and tenderness I can fully intrust myself and who I know will bear with all my weakness…
Publishing or even openly discussing her experiences would not have been an option for Elizabeth Parker. But embroidery was an accessible medium that could be used to speak her truths and create a private record of her experiences. She may not have been able to speak her truths aloud, but she could use her skilled hands to stitch them.
Embroidery as resistance can also been seen in a more public form in the work of the Artists’ Suffrage League in England. Between 1908 and 1913 the Artists’ Suffrage League embroidered over 150 protest banners to support the women’s suffrage movement. These large scale works of embroidery were used in physical protests, to resist patriarchy and assert the rights of women.
The design album of Mary Lowndes, founder of The Artists’ Suffrage League, is held by The Women’s Library at the London School of Economics. This album includes sketches, notations, and fabric samples which provide insight into the types of embroidered banners created by the League.
Embroidered Brighton banner design by Mary Lowndes, 1907.
The banners featured the names of suffrage leaders, prominent women scientists, authors, academics, as well as suffrage slogans such as “justice for all”, “votes for women”, and “justice not favour”. The Artists’ Suffrage League used a traditionally feminine craft to assert the accomplishments and rights of women, repurposing a craft associated with the private domestic sphere to make a public case for suffrage.
Two embroidery hoops made by the author
The embroidered suffrage banners of the early 1900s have much in common with today’s protest embroidery. Both use embroidery to tell stories and change narratives. In 2003, Betsy Greer coined the term craftivism which describes the combination of craft and activism and the use of craft to have inspire dialogue. The work of modern embroiderers Hannah Hill, Shannon Downey, and others have been used in protests against Donald Trump, against racism, and against specific pieces of legislation. Though the term craftivism is relatively new, the use of embroidery and other crafts traditionally associated with women as a form of resistance—both public and private—has a long history. But for historians studying times and places where the fullness of women’s lives and experiences was largely excluded from public records, embroidery can be a vital source. And in a culture that deems the particulars of women’s lives unworthy of record and preservation, to stitch one’s life into linen, even in private, can be an act of resistance.
- Rozika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminie, 4th edition, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), ix.
- While academic history may have been slow to realize the importance of embroidery as a source, women interested in the decorative arts were not. In the introduction to her 1921 book The Development of Embroidery in America, Candace Wheeler notes: “We can deduce from these needle records much of the physical circumstances of woman’s long pilgrimage down the ages, of her mental processes, of her growth in thought. We can judge from the character of her art whether she was at peace with herself and the world, and from its status we become aware of its relative importance to the conditions of her life.”
