How many little girls, I wonder, begin working with embroidery at the age
of six? How many, I wonder, even know
what embroidery is? I started my life as
a needlewoman at the age of three when my mother introduced me to Lacing
Cards
. I loved weaving that
shoelace through the holes in the thick, chunky, cardboard picture. I would do
it again and again and again. When I was six I graduated to perforated sewing
paper and a fat, blunt-ended needle. It
was magic watching a picture emerge out of a series of Xs. Gradually, as I got older, I was introduced
to thread, and various embroidery stitches - running, outline, back stitch,
lazy daisy, etc. Tea towels (though, at
that age, I never once had tea) and pillow cases were my specialty.
It's been a while since I've talked with young girls to see if this skill
maintains. Sadly, I think operating a keyboard seems to be the only skill at
which modern young people excel. I
mention this because I came across this worn set of potholders the other day.
My mother had given them to me long ago. She made these, she told me, when she
was sixteen. They were one of the first things placed into her “Hope
Chest” (a chest or other storage unit in which young women collected
household goods in anticipation of marriage).
Take a look at them. The tiny, perfect stitching is phenomenal.
The
sweet pattern is certainly reminiscent of earlier days, but also the great
skill in their creation. In all my years of stitching with my oversized,
Mississippi Valley farmer-sized hands, I've never been able to accomplish what seemed
to be natural to her.
If you have a young girl in your life, do encourage her to set aside her
iPhone and learn to stitch. Her progeny will find her creations to be such
treasures.
This post is linked to:
This post is linked to:
