I was separating out some knitting, crocheting and embroidery items I picked up at a local auction a couple weeks ago. For a minute, I couldn’t distinguish between the three. Knitting uses heavy yarn. Crocheting uses thread; needlepoint has those hard mesh-like pieces you pull the needle through.
The person who owned these items apparently did it all. I found lots of supplies – knitting needles, crocheting needles, vintage needles, threads, cross stitch kits, scissors (one gold plated that looks like a stork). These items were musty so she (I’m assuming it was a she) must have put them away years ago. I’m assuming that she passed on and her family decided that these were among the things they did not want.
This unnamed woman also left two newspaper pages with articles about women’s clothing, embroidery patterns for a scarf and lamp-shade design, along with an article on tatting lace (which I had never heard of before. In fact, I found some tatting shuttles among the items. I had to research to figure out what they were). The articles are from 1919, and include frocks and lingerie blouses.
Whenever I see women in these early newspapers, it makes me wonder about black women like my grandmother who was in her early 20s at the time and raising a family. I’m sure women who look like her were sewing, making quilts and mending clothes for their families, but they never saw themselves in the newspaper. How did they do “it”?
Sherry, I often wonder the same thing as i look through my ephemera collections and old ads. I collect needle packs, those fold over cards with needles in them and great graphics, but… never a black person represented. Huh? Did black women not sew? Are they kidding? I keep waiting to find some secret cache of needle cards distributed for a black sewing audience, but I think I wait in vain.