The Point of The Needle - How the Ancient Craft of Stitching Shapes Us

December 7, 202300:29:59

The needle and thread have been humanity’s constant companions for tens of thousands of years: far longer than the dog, the sword, or the wheel, and much longer than reading and writing. Down the centuries the needle has rendered us incredible...

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[00:19]
A
Welcome to Haptic and Hughes Tales of Textiles. My name is Jo Andrews and I'm a hand weaver interested in what cloth tile tells us about ourselves and our societies. Often the stories and information that textiles give us are ignored and we lose a whole dimension of human experience. That's certainly true in this episode, which is a little different from the others. It's a way of saying goodbye to 2023 and and to this series of Tales of Textiles. This is the last episode of series five, which has seen us travel both in time and place. I wanted to end it with news of Haptic and Hughes pick for our book of the year, which this time is Barbara Berman's new book just out called the Point of the Needle. Barbara is a historian and she's written about textiles in the past and the role they've played in women's lives in the book she co authored called the A Hidden History of Women's Lives. But this book is a much broader one that seeks to shine a light on the extraordinary human endeavor of. Of stitching.
[01:56]
B
Thank you for inviting me to talk about it. I suppose in a nutshell, I wrote the book because I wanted to celebrate this ancient craft because I think, well, it's obvious, isn't it? Stitches are central to the way we live. I'm just looking at my jeans and my shoes and even car seats and dog beds and all kinds of things. We are dependent on the stitch. There are plenty of how to books. I mean, this is not one of them. The Point of the Needle is really about thinking about sewing. And I think that that's how you celebrate something is to think as deeply as you can about it. And so I wanted to insert it really into serious conversations about making and about the importance of that to human flourishing. I mean, that's where it belongs in a public conversation. I feel the significance of making. We are in danger of overlooking so much comes with making, the development of problem solving, and it's very good for mental well being and so on. So on the list, as long as you're on of the benefits of doing it. And I'm afraid that we may be losing this respect for making. And I actually open the book with a quote from Glenn Adamson. He says, I totally agree with him. I'm just going to read it. By better understanding the tangible things in our lives, we better understand our fellow humans. So this book is about people. It is about stitching, but it's about people. And I also wanted to have a chance to just spend time listening to people who sew now what they think, what they feel, and try to develop a picture of sewing in greater depth and try to increase our awareness of the agency that sewing and making and craft generally brings us and why that is vital and for our flourishing and also more and more vital given the circumstances in which we find ourselves these days.
[03:54]
A
Barbara spoke to a large number of people for the book, people who sew in different circumstances, places and times. And she says that she discovered that many of them had what she called sewing in the blood.
[04:11]
B
This was one of the things that came out in the stories time and time again that people were talking to me about sowing and almost as if they're somehow sort of sewing in the blood in some families, right back to. To the 19th century, when seamstress is in the family, including my own, and learning from mothers and aunts and grannies and great grannies and so on. So I was raised in a country vicarage where there was very little money. There was lots to do and lots to learn and a very enriching environment, but there wasn't a lot of money. And so making was the thing. You know, we had chickens and a pig and we grew our own vegetables. And my mother made all the textiley things, including my clothes and her clothes. So I saw it happening all the time. I saw what value was placed on it. Her determination to sit exams in dressmaking and soft tailoring. And there it was all the time. I do say in the book that she's like a seam, really, that runs through the book. Invisible seam, really. But I never reached the levels of skill that she did, and I don't want anybody to think that I'm talking about only skilled things mattering. I think botched making is just as valuable and often as satisfying, having a go at something.
[05:25]
A
At the heart of Barbara's book are two sets of interviews carried out with stitches 25 years apart. In the 1990s, she set up a project to record the sewing memories of several women from all walks of life at the time. It didn't meet with great approval from her academic colleagues or her interviewees, male.
[05:50]
B
Colleagues, often not all of them, but a lot, clearly regarded it as, you know, just a bit below par, really. However, my boss did give me the time. He gave me a sabbatical and I just, I suppose, jumped in. I just found as many elderly women, I wanted the older woman, and I mean old. You know, one was just shy of her 100th birthday. And so they were in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and so on, and they like My male colleagues thought this was a bit silly, you know, so what, who's interested in that? But when I told them it was going to go into an archive, a sound archive, one of them said, oh, that's like having my voice in a museum. Which I thought was a wonderful take on it. And once, you know, sat down with a cup of tea and they started to talk, they couldn't be stopped. There was so much to say. And they had tremendous recall of, oh, this is the dress that my sister made me. And these buttons were self covered. It was kind of heather color and then it had sort of blue. The sleeves are wonderful. So you get this marvelous and rather intriguing to me, strength of recall about what they made or what was made for them. And they seem to naturally tell their stories. They write autobiographies, really, in chapters, what kind of home they were raised in, what sort of sewing their mother did, what they were taught at school when they got their first job, what it was like in the Second World War. And so they were in the end, in a way, natural storytellers, and said, oh, when it's on tape, can I send a copy to my family? So they moved from it can't be interesting because it's women's work, it's just mine, who knows? It's not interesting, that kind of attitude to this realization that there was a lot to say. It had a long trajectory in their lives.
[07:41]
A
25 years later, during COVID Barbara repeated the exercise. She sought out as many stitches as she could, and this time, because she couldn't go to them, she asked them to write down their sewing stories.
[07:58]
B
Overall, one's conclusion has to be that with sewing there are many, many, many continuities over generations, actually. But there are also this change, and I found this second tranche, if you like, very interesting. There were more ingenious ways of describing their gender where there was a much greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental issues. I mean, that was not in the conversation at all 25 years ago. The language was a bit different. Mental health was a term that cropped up again and again recently, never used by my earlier group. They did talk about liking to be creative, enjoyment. They talked about satisfaction. So it was slightly different vocabulary, but I think they're probably getting at the same thing, using different words for these, this kind of inner sense of the value to them of sewing.
[08:52]
A
That was a similarity. But the two groups gave different reasons for why they chose to sew, with the second group showing, unsurprisingly, a much greater awareness of the Social injustices that can lie behind commercial textile production.
[09:12]
B
They're much more aware of that as an effect of fast fashion, super fast fashion. And so they are positioning themselves, probably true to say, they're positioning themselves towards the outer world. Perhaps more than my earlier group were doing. I think the earlier group were very conscious of saving money, very conscious of wanting to look fashionable and being in a situation where it was a fashion for that year or that couple of years and they wanted to fit into that and they wanted to make things that work. So I mean, the new look is classic case longing for the new look. Dior's new look of 47 and wanting to have big, lovely spread out skirts and all this kind of thing, then that meant you had to have sort of spread out coat and you had to think about those other things. And so they were busy with their sewing machines to enjoy fashion. And if they didn't have a regular sized body, of course that meant they had to improvise a bit more.
[10:03]
A
The modern stitchers are also using sewing in a much more political way to make clothes that express their identity rather than helping them fit in and be fashionable, as the older sewers had done.
[10:19]
B
If you feel that you're excluded from the language and the look of fashion because you're not the right shape or you're. You're too curvy or you're not in a traditional gender slot, you want to create a new kind of visual look. You want to create a kind of public space for yourself. You may want to be more androgynous or you may want. The complexities of gender now are really on the move, aren't they? And so you can sew your way into a place that's yours that expresses you and not what the big brands want you to be. And I think that's a kind of political stitch. You'd think of the AIDS memorial quilt in America. If that's not political, I don't know what is. More than 50 tons of it now. It represents so many lives that would otherwise not be in the picture. So sewing at home has far more dimensions to it, I think, than just to say leisure. I think that in a way some of this is quite radical. It's not just suffragettes sewing their banners in the past. It's quite radical. And it's also bringing people together. I'm thinking of organizations like the curvy Sewing Collective in America. Thousands of people feel supported by it because it's allowing them to express themselves and be what they want to do and to Create clothing, and particularly clothing, but also home furnishings that they're not given. You know, it's a matter of people being able to take a bit more control over what they have, what they look like, how they feel.
[11:52]
A
It's also not just women who are now home sewing.
[11:57]
B
It's clear from other sources as well that more men are taking it up. And I think retailers will tell you that more men are taking it up. And of course, thankfully, the Americans have coined a word for it, sobros. And there are now significant number of websites that encourage men and men talking to men about making things and how they have to, in a way, break through some kind of gender barrier and to shift this within a sense of certain kinds of masculinities and put sewing in there as an okay thing to do. I did talk to a retailer in London and she said, oh, yes, they've been increasing numbers for some years, but they all want to make a shirt. And I've never made anything for people. I'd like to make a shirt. And you explain to them probably the most complicated thing you could start, oh, it can't be that difficult, they say, and they buy a pattern and the material, and off they go.
[12:50]
A
How many men survive the intricate and difficult process of making a shirt? We can only guess. But in the past, the emphasis of domestic sewing was on saving money and thriftiness, being able to have fashions that you couldn't otherwise afford. But Barbara is highlighting an important change. Buying fast fashion is now cheaper than making your own. So people have found new purposes in making for themselves, their friends, and families. Barbara also believes that stitching changes our relationship to consumerism, and we develop a greater respect for the 70 million workers, mainly women, who sew for a living.
[13:38]
B
I think the connection is, just look at your jeans. You know, who made them, what did you pay for them? If you spend £20 on a T shirt, how much of that £20 is the maker getting? Usually disturbingly little. So I think that the making of things at home can bring with it, and often does, according to the women I talk to, the greater awareness of clothing trades, the textile trades, the social justice side of clothing. There's one photograph in the book. It's two hands and a button trying to sew a button on. We know from a recent survey that not many people know how to sew a button on. I think a photograph is, for me, quite symbolic of a major problem and a major. It's a symbol of our relationship to consumerism generally.
[14:25]
A
Which brings us squarely to one of the great difficulties in thinking about stitching for one set of people, it brings great joy. At its best, a way to express our identity, to create something that brings us pleasure, to enjoy the skills and process of making something. And then for others employed in the textile industry, it can bring misery, long hours, appalling unsafe conditions, low pay, modern slavery, and even death.
[15:00]
B
So we buy all this stuff and we wear our new garments, I think seven or eight times before they're discarded. They're discarded for numerous reasons. Buttons come off is one reason. Oh, can't wear it, or people have changed shape or fashions have changed or it's just got kind of forgotten about and the joy of shopping has taken over again. And off, off we go. So what I find interesting is this renaissance, undoubted renaissance in sewing for yourself, whatever gender you are. And then this undoubted rise in the consumption of fast fashion. Home sewing isn't stopping, it's growing. It grew in Covid. And in Covid it was often a way of people feeling useful because they were making protective items for health workers. And we need to remember that some people really like working in factories. It brings companionship. We mustn't be totally negative about factories, but my goodness, in the clothing trade, clothing industry, it's largely not like that. Some of the big, most familiar labels are paying below the national wage. It happens with big names who are employing people in Eastern Europe, for example, and it happens here in the uk lest as a case in point. So we mustn't think that it's kind of those problems have been sort of exported to the Far east from us. They are here and getting a grip on that. Becoming a thoughtful consumer, I think is one of the things that sewing yourself can help with.
[16:31]
A
So how does Barbara act as a thoughtful consumer herself?
[16:36]
B
I like buying clothes. My family will tell you because I've bought what some people would call investment pieces. I am wearing things that I bought 25 years ago. I don't wear them every year, but I wear them. And I also now dig down. Yes, it's okay. You put on your website you've got an anti slavery policy or something. What does it actually mean? What are you actually doing and where are you getting your materials from? How much do you know about your supply chain? Usually very little. Are you a B core? You know, that's a good thing. And I do ask myself those kinds of questions. And I was looking the other day at a well known high street band that was advertising some warm underwear as cotton. And I thought, oh yeah, let's have a look at the label. 52% cotton. The rest is acrylic and elastane. So you have to teach yourself, really. Although there are some websites very, very helpful on all of this, the idea that acrylic may take 200 years to degrade it seems to me enormously shocking, some of this.
[17:42]
A
So Barbara's rules are buy investment pieces, look at the label. So what would your top three or four rules be?
[17:53]
B
Don't buy immediately, don't rush at it. Think and go back another day and you'll find that that amazing thing you really thought you couldn't live without actually sort of faded slightly into the. And this is not what I'm good at, but it's what I know I should be good at is to get all my clothes out, a great big huge mountain of them, and give away those that maybe don't fit me anymore or I don't like anymore and have a sort. Have a sort. But when you love textiles the way I do, I just think, you know, that is hard. So I think another top rule would be, apart from thinking twice or thrice before you buy, is to think, well, the next thing I buy, is it going to work with something I've already got? What am I aiming for here? And I'm trying to discipline myself so that. I mean, in theory, if you looked at my wardrobe, you think she doesn't need any more clothes the rest of her life.
[18:56]
A
In her book, Barbara says, I want to celebrate those who sew and to reinstate their largely untold narrative into what we choose to remember of today and the recent past. It's a phenomenon with its own history and cultural memory. But she adds that however we stitch it is work that is undervalued or unseen.
[19:23]
B
I suppose it's partly. It's a bit like the air we breathe. We're not going to talk about that all the time. And we're sitting here enclosed, all these stitches, let's get on with life. That sort of absence in our minds. I suppose it's glued to the idea that it's women's work. And women's work as we know is overlooked, marginalized, misunderstood, devalued, underpaid, and so on, so forth. Things have changed a bit, but by and large it's easy to ignore and to label as women's work. So it's marginal. And that seems to be under pinned in a rather probably quite dangerous way really, that children are coming out of school without much practical confidence, without much practical skill. And I think that is dangerous. It's depriving people of one important element of being human, which is to make, you know, we've got an opposable thumb, two opposable thumbs, most cases, let's get on with it and use it and celebrate it. I think this, not looking at it is also part of a. The educational problem is part of a wider problem where we regularly divide brain work from handwork, head work from manual. If you do head work, you're likely to earn more. If you earn what's thought of as manual work, you are likely to earn less. I mean, it's a deep division, it's a social division, it's an economic division. And we are in that sense also overlooking the way that human, humankind isn't made like that. Your hands are a kind of brain. And children learn so much from making. So I, I think there are these different forces at work, really, which make it easy to overlook sewing. And it looks easy, doesn't it, a needle and thread, you know, there's nothing to. It must be easy, so it must be not very valuable or interesting.
[21:19]
A
And into the breach left by the inadequate teaching of subjects at schools that develop handwork has stepped social media and books enabling adults to catch up what they missed earlier.
[21:35]
B
So there are lots of, lots of books about how to sew. There's no doubt that people want that. And there'll be a lot of websites and some of them really good are stepping in and covering the hole that's left by these decisions made about schooling. And people who may not have had a very good time at school learning to sew are now having a really good time on their Friday night Internet sewing group or whatever they've got. And so that side seems to me very positive at the moment. People making use of social media in a big way to share what they're doing, share their makes, put the photos up and so on, as well as really meeting in real life.
[22:15]
A
Barbara understands very well the strong connections with memories and emotions that sewing brings people who enjoy doing this. She's hugely articulate about why this is. One reason is an appreciation for cloth itself.
[22:36]
B
The love of fabric, I think, drives a lot of makers, whether they're quilting or whether they're doing hobby kind of felt work or something, or whether they're doing very high skilled self tailoring or something right across all those different groups of people who do so. It's love of cloth is a very important one and that's a clearly a multisensory relationship. People hoard cloth. Mary Beth Stout she's an American sociologist and she wrote a book on quilting from a sociological point of view. It's called quilting the Fabric of Everyday Life. And a lot of American women that she talked to felt slightly guilty. So they use the word hoard or stash, a. Because they're slightly addicted, addiction, language. But it also because they felt a bit guilty that they were taking time to themselves, away from their families. Sometimes they would sneak another bag of fabric for the next quilt into their house when their husband was away. And so love of fabric, it mustn't be forgotten. And that's everything from people who fastidiously only want to sew with natural fabrics, or people who love a bit of glitter, a bit of stretch, you know, and these. All the different things that are emerging now that we didn't think of as fabric before. Anyway, I think we start loving cloth. We all know children and their attachment to their blanket or their teddy bear and how distressed, really distressed they get. If that's lost or taken from them, it starts early. And that's about the smell and the feel.
[24:13]
A
But beyond the cloth. Barbara believes that when we stitch for ourselves, something complex is taking place within us, something that isn't simple.
[24:25]
B
Sewing, especially if it's a bit repetitive, is soothing and it brings out. Is it dopamine? How to pronounce it, as well as being fulfilling. And a lot of people said to me, and this really did hit me, actually, how many people said it? When they're sewing, they're thinking of the moment. They're in the moment, deeply in the moment. The outside world might not exist, but at the same time, their sewing hands remind them of their mothers or their aunties or the thinking of past people. And in the end, again, I've said this on several occasions, they're also thinking forwards. They're wanting to complete it. Oh, this is good. It's turning out well. She'll like it. They're making it for somebody else or whatever. And so they're projecting forwards, but so it includes so many. I don't know what the words are for this. In a way, it's a sort of transcendent thing, this tiny thing.
[25:20]
A
The needle has been with us for thousands of years of human existence. There's a needle that's been found in a cave in Siberia that's nearly 50,000 years old. It could be threaded today and reused just as it is. It's little surprise then, that we have a special connection to the skill of using it.
[25:45]
B
I don't know how much that's true of other crafts. Anyway, we all know when we pick up a needle, there's this connectivity, there's this feeling of having agency over something. Even just cutting out a piece of cloth correctly is a very satisfied, scary because it's expensive and you put your shears through it and it's crunching away and you think, I've got it right. So at all stages of making and using familiar tools that you may have inherited, one person in the book who told me about keeping her threads in an old Russian biscuit tin that had been in her family a long time. And so it's not just the action, it's the stuff that you're working with. It's the cloth, it's the tools, it's the space. I mean, Sue Stuart Smith has written this brilliant book called the well Gardened Mind. I think somebody needs to write a book about the well stitched mind. I think there are so many dimensions. As a historian, I'm not sure I'm totally equipped to get it. I can see it's there. And they are people who talk about their sewing, talk about it with passion and they get passionate about their, about their sewing machines. You get really, really not only just attached to the machine, but it, because it's, it's the biggest tool we have, it's the heaviest tools, most expensive tool and they love it when it's all going right.
[27:11]
A
Thank you to Barbara for her time and her insight into stitching. Haptic and Hue is hosted by me, Jo Andrews, and produced and edited by Bill Taylor. It's an independent production supported entirely by its listeners who bring us ideas and generously fund us via Buy Me a Coffee or by Becoming a friend of Hannah. This keeps the podcast independent and free from advertising and sponsorship. It also brings you extra content every month with a separate podcast called Travels with Textiles, hosted by Bill Taylor and me. You can find out more about this episode and friends of Haptic and hu at www. Hapticandhew.com this is the last episode in series 5 of Haptic and Hughes Tales of Textiles. We'll be back on the first Thursday of January 2024 with the first episode of series six. Until then, we wish you a joyful, festive season and a very, very peaceful new year. Until then, thank you for listening and enjoy your making. But before you go, I wanted to end this episode and this series with an extract from Barbara's chapter on mending. She says mending is hope and optimism, even when it is a choreography, because it is for life, not against it. While budget self sufficiency, resistance to over consumption, and environmental sustainability may all come into play when we recycle darn or patch, we may also be mustering the means to preserve emotion and memory to maintain attachments, for instance, through saving a much loved garment that has been part of our life for a long time. Human resilience takes many mental and physical forms. Stitching to mend and recreate is one of them.
[29:45]
B
SA.

The Point of The Needle - How the Ancient Craft of Stitching Shapes Us

December 7, 202300:29:59

Summary6 min read

Haptic & Hue: Tales of Textiles
Episode: The Point of The Needle - How the Ancient Craft of Stitching Shapes Us
Host: Jo Andrews
Guest: Barbara Berman
Release Date: December 7, 2023

Introduction

In the final episode of Series Five of Haptic & Hue's Tales of Textiles, host Jo Andrews bids farewell to 2023 and the current series by spotlighting Barbara Berman's newly released book, The Point of the Needle. This episode diverges slightly from previous ones, delving deeply into the history, significance, and evolving role of stitching in human society.

Barbara Berman's Book: The Point of the Needle

Barbara Berman, a historian with previous works on textiles and women's roles, introduces her book as a celebration of the ancient craft of stitching. She emphasizes that stitching is not merely a practical skill but a profound human endeavor that shapes our lives and societies.

Barbara Berman [01:55]: "The Point of the Needle is really about thinking about sewing. And I think that that's how you celebrate something is to think as deeply as you can about it."

Barbara's objective is to elevate sewing into serious conversations about making and human flourishing, highlighting its benefits for problem-solving and mental well-being.

Sewing in the Blood: Generational Transmission

Barbara shares insights from her interviews, revealing that for many, sewing is an intrinsic part of their heritage, passed down through generations.

Barbara Berman [04:10]: "Sewing in the blood...sort of sewing in the blood in some families, right back to the 19th century... learning from mothers and aunts and grannies and great grannies."

Growing up in a financially constrained environment, Barbara witnessed her mother's dedication to dressmaking, instilling in her a deep respect for the craft.

Barbara Berman [05:24]: "I never reached the levels of skill that she did, and I don't want anybody to think that I'm talking about only skilled things mattering."

She underscores that both skilled and less-than-perfect sewing endeavors hold value, fostering personal satisfaction and creativity.

Changing Values in Sewing: 25 Years Apart

Barbara's research includes two sets of interviews conducted 25 years apart. The initial interviews in the 1990s faced skepticism from academic peers but revealed rich, autobiographical stories from elderly women about their sewing experiences.

Barbara Berman [05:50]: "They moved from it can't be interesting because it's women's work...to realizing that there was a lot to say."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Barbara revisited this project, this time collecting written accounts due to restrictions. The newer cohort exhibited a heightened awareness of sustainability and mental health, reflecting societal shifts.

Barbara Berman [07:58]: "There are more ingenious ways of describing their gender where there was a much greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental issues."

Sewing as Political Expression

Modern stitchers are increasingly using sewing as a means of political expression, creating garments that reflect their identities rather than conforming to prevailing fashion trends.

Barbara Berman [10:19]: "If you feel that you're excluded from the language and the look of fashion...you can sew your way into a place that's yours that expresses you."

Examples include movements like the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Curvy Sewing Collective, which empower individuals to express themselves and challenge industry norms.

Barbara Berman [10:19]: "It's quite radical...allowing them to express themselves and be what they want to do."

The Rise of Men in Sewing

Barbara observes a growing number of men engaging in sewing, breaking traditional gender barriers. Terms like "sutores" have emerged, reflecting this inclusivity.

Barbara Berman [11:56]: "More men are taking it up...how they have to, in a way, break through some kind of gender barrier."

Retailers report increased male participation, often starting with simple projects like making shirts, demonstrating the craft's expanding appeal.

Barbara Berman [12:49]: "They want to make a shirt...and off they go."

Sewing vs. Fast Fashion: A Shift in Consumerism

Barbara highlights a significant shift in consumer behavior: while fast fashion remains prevalent, a renaissance in home sewing is emerging. This movement fosters thoughtful consumption and a deeper appreciation for the people behind clothing production.

Barbara Berman [12:49]: "Buying fast fashion is now cheaper than making your own...stitching changes our relationship to consumerism."

She critiques the exploitation in the textile industry, where workers often receive minimal compensation, advocating for greater awareness and ethical consumption.

Barbara Berman [13:38]: "How much of that £20 is the maker getting? Usually disturbingly little."

Thoughtful Consumption: Barbara’s Approach

Barbara practices mindful consumerism by investing in long-lasting pieces and scrutinizing product labels for material and ethical standards.

Barbara Berman [16:35]: "Don't buy immediately, don't rush at it...the next thing I buy, is it going to work with something I've already got?"

Her approach involves minimizing unnecessary purchases and ensuring that new acquisitions complement existing wardrobes, fostering sustainability.

The Undervaluation of Sewing

Barbara discusses the societal undervaluation of sewing, often relegated to "women's work" and thus marginalized and underappreciated. This perception contributes to a lack of practical skills among younger generations.

Barbara Berman [19:23]: "It's a bit like the air we breathe...plausibly overlooked and to label as women's work."

She warns that this division between manual and intellectual labor is detrimental, depriving individuals of essential skills and a fuller human experience.

Emotional and Sensory Connection to Sewing

Sewing is depicted as a deeply emotional and sensory activity, fostering connections to memories, family, and personal identity. The tactile love of fabric drives many to engage passionately with the craft.

Barbara Berman [22:35]: "The love of fabric is a very important one and that's a clearly a multisensory relationship."

Sociologist Mary Beth Stout notes the addictive nature of fabric collecting, intertwining guilt and passion, highlighting sewing's profound emotional resonance.

Barbara Berman [22:35]: "They felt slightly guilty that they were taking time to themselves...their sewing machines."

Conclusion: Mending as Hope

Barbara posits that mending garments symbolizes hope and resilience, intertwining practical action with emotional preservation.

Barbara Berman [29:45]: "Mending is hope and optimism...preserve emotion and memory to maintain attachments."

This sentiment encapsulates the episode's overarching theme: stitching is not only a practical skill but a fundamental human expression of creativity, identity, and resilience.

Final Thoughts

Jo Andrews wraps up the episode by acknowledging Barbara Berman's contributions to understanding the multifaceted nature of sewing. She also shares an extract from Barbara's chapter on mending, reinforcing the theme of sewing as a testament to human resilience.

Join Jo and Bill Taylor in the upcoming Series Six of Haptic & Hue’s Tales of Textiles, launching January 2024. For more information, visit www.hapticandhew.com.

Notable Quotes

Barbara Berman [01:55]: "The Point of the Needle is really about thinking about sewing. And I think that that's how you celebrate something is to think as deeply as you can about it."
Barbara Berman [04:10]: "Sewing in the blood...sort of sewing in the blood in some families, right back to the 19th century..."
Barbara Berman [10:19]: "If you feel that you're excluded from the language and the look of fashion...you can sew your way into a place that's yours that expresses you."
Barbara Berman [19:23]: "It's a bit like the air we breathe...plausibly overlooked and to label as women's work."
Barbara Berman [29:45]: "Mending is hope and optimism...preserve emotion and memory to maintain attachments."

This episode of Haptic & Hue offers a comprehensive exploration of the enduring and evolving significance of stitching, intertwining personal narratives with broader societal implications. Whether you're an avid stitcher or simply intrigued by the cultural dimensions of textiles, Barbara Berman's insights provide a profound understanding of how an ancient craft continues to shape and reflect our lives.

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Transcript34 lines

[00:19]
A
Welcome to Haptic and Hughes Tales of Textiles. My name is Jo Andrews and I'm a hand weaver interested in what cloth tile tells us about ourselves and our societies. Often the stories and information that textiles give us are ignored and we lose a whole dimension of human experience. That's certainly true in this episode, which is a little different from the others. It's a way of saying goodbye to 2023 and and to this series of Tales of Textiles. This is the last episode of series five, which has seen us travel both in time and place. I wanted to end it with news of Haptic and Hughes pick for our book of the year, which this time is Barbara Berman's new book just out called the Point of the Needle. Barbara is a historian and she's written about textiles in the past and the role they've played in women's lives in the book she co authored called the A Hidden History of Women's Lives. But this book is a much broader one that seeks to shine a light on the extraordinary human endeavor of. Of stitching.
[01:56]
B
Thank you for inviting me to talk about it. I suppose in a nutshell, I wrote the book because I wanted to celebrate this ancient craft because I think, well, it's obvious, isn't it? Stitches are central to the way we live. I'm just looking at my jeans and my shoes and even car seats and dog beds and all kinds of things. We are dependent on the stitch. There are plenty of how to books. I mean, this is not one of them. The Point of the Needle is really about thinking about sewing. And I think that that's how you celebrate something is to think as deeply as you can about it. And so I wanted to insert it really into serious conversations about making and about the importance of that to human flourishing. I mean, that's where it belongs in a public conversation. I feel the significance of making. We are in danger of overlooking so much comes with making, the development of problem solving, and it's very good for mental well being and so on. So on the list, as long as you're on of the benefits of doing it. And I'm afraid that we may be losing this respect for making. And I actually open the book with a quote from Glenn Adamson. He says, I totally agree with him. I'm just going to read it. By better understanding the tangible things in our lives, we better understand our fellow humans. So this book is about people. It is about stitching, but it's about people. And I also wanted to have a chance to just spend time listening to people who sew now what they think, what they feel, and try to develop a picture of sewing in greater depth and try to increase our awareness of the agency that sewing and making and craft generally brings us and why that is vital and for our flourishing and also more and more vital given the circumstances in which we find ourselves these days.
[03:54]
A
Barbara spoke to a large number of people for the book, people who sew in different circumstances, places and times. And she says that she discovered that many of them had what she called sewing in the blood.
[04:11]
B
This was one of the things that came out in the stories time and time again that people were talking to me about sowing and almost as if they're somehow sort of sewing in the blood in some families, right back to. To the 19th century, when seamstress is in the family, including my own, and learning from mothers and aunts and grannies and great grannies and so on. So I was raised in a country vicarage where there was very little money. There was lots to do and lots to learn and a very enriching environment, but there wasn't a lot of money. And so making was the thing. You know, we had chickens and a pig and we grew our own vegetables. And my mother made all the textiley things, including my clothes and her clothes. So I saw it happening all the time. I saw what value was placed on it. Her determination to sit exams in dressmaking and soft tailoring. And there it was all the time. I do say in the book that she's like a seam, really, that runs through the book. Invisible seam, really. But I never reached the levels of skill that she did, and I don't want anybody to think that I'm talking about only skilled things mattering. I think botched making is just as valuable and often as satisfying, having a go at something.
[05:25]
A
At the heart of Barbara's book are two sets of interviews carried out with stitches 25 years apart. In the 1990s, she set up a project to record the sewing memories of several women from all walks of life at the time. It didn't meet with great approval from her academic colleagues or her interviewees, male.
[05:50]
B
Colleagues, often not all of them, but a lot, clearly regarded it as, you know, just a bit below par, really. However, my boss did give me the time. He gave me a sabbatical and I just, I suppose, jumped in. I just found as many elderly women, I wanted the older woman, and I mean old. You know, one was just shy of her 100th birthday. And so they were in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and so on, and they like My male colleagues thought this was a bit silly, you know, so what, who's interested in that? But when I told them it was going to go into an archive, a sound archive, one of them said, oh, that's like having my voice in a museum. Which I thought was a wonderful take on it. And once, you know, sat down with a cup of tea and they started to talk, they couldn't be stopped. There was so much to say. And they had tremendous recall of, oh, this is the dress that my sister made me. And these buttons were self covered. It was kind of heather color and then it had sort of blue. The sleeves are wonderful. So you get this marvelous and rather intriguing to me, strength of recall about what they made or what was made for them. And they seem to naturally tell their stories. They write autobiographies, really, in chapters, what kind of home they were raised in, what sort of sewing their mother did, what they were taught at school when they got their first job, what it was like in the Second World War. And so they were in the end, in a way, natural storytellers, and said, oh, when it's on tape, can I send a copy to my family? So they moved from it can't be interesting because it's women's work, it's just mine, who knows? It's not interesting, that kind of attitude to this realization that there was a lot to say. It had a long trajectory in their lives.
[07:41]
A
25 years later, during COVID Barbara repeated the exercise. She sought out as many stitches as she could, and this time, because she couldn't go to them, she asked them to write down their sewing stories.
[07:58]
B
Overall, one's conclusion has to be that with sewing there are many, many, many continuities over generations, actually. But there are also this change, and I found this second tranche, if you like, very interesting. There were more ingenious ways of describing their gender where there was a much greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental issues. I mean, that was not in the conversation at all 25 years ago. The language was a bit different. Mental health was a term that cropped up again and again recently, never used by my earlier group. They did talk about liking to be creative, enjoyment. They talked about satisfaction. So it was slightly different vocabulary, but I think they're probably getting at the same thing, using different words for these, this kind of inner sense of the value to them of sewing.
[08:52]
A
That was a similarity. But the two groups gave different reasons for why they chose to sew, with the second group showing, unsurprisingly, a much greater awareness of the Social injustices that can lie behind commercial textile production.
[09:12]
B
They're much more aware of that as an effect of fast fashion, super fast fashion. And so they are positioning themselves, probably true to say, they're positioning themselves towards the outer world. Perhaps more than my earlier group were doing. I think the earlier group were very conscious of saving money, very conscious of wanting to look fashionable and being in a situation where it was a fashion for that year or that couple of years and they wanted to fit into that and they wanted to make things that work. So I mean, the new look is classic case longing for the new look. Dior's new look of 47 and wanting to have big, lovely spread out skirts and all this kind of thing, then that meant you had to have sort of spread out coat and you had to think about those other things. And so they were busy with their sewing machines to enjoy fashion. And if they didn't have a regular sized body, of course that meant they had to improvise a bit more.
[10:03]
A
The modern stitchers are also using sewing in a much more political way to make clothes that express their identity rather than helping them fit in and be fashionable, as the older sewers had done.
[10:19]
B
If you feel that you're excluded from the language and the look of fashion because you're not the right shape or you're. You're too curvy or you're not in a traditional gender slot, you want to create a new kind of visual look. You want to create a kind of public space for yourself. You may want to be more androgynous or you may want. The complexities of gender now are really on the move, aren't they? And so you can sew your way into a place that's yours that expresses you and not what the big brands want you to be. And I think that's a kind of political stitch. You'd think of the AIDS memorial quilt in America. If that's not political, I don't know what is. More than 50 tons of it now. It represents so many lives that would otherwise not be in the picture. So sewing at home has far more dimensions to it, I think, than just to say leisure. I think that in a way some of this is quite radical. It's not just suffragettes sewing their banners in the past. It's quite radical. And it's also bringing people together. I'm thinking of organizations like the curvy Sewing Collective in America. Thousands of people feel supported by it because it's allowing them to express themselves and be what they want to do and to Create clothing, and particularly clothing, but also home furnishings that they're not given. You know, it's a matter of people being able to take a bit more control over what they have, what they look like, how they feel.
[11:52]
A
It's also not just women who are now home sewing.
[11:57]
B
It's clear from other sources as well that more men are taking it up. And I think retailers will tell you that more men are taking it up. And of course, thankfully, the Americans have coined a word for it, sobros. And there are now significant number of websites that encourage men and men talking to men about making things and how they have to, in a way, break through some kind of gender barrier and to shift this within a sense of certain kinds of masculinities and put sewing in there as an okay thing to do. I did talk to a retailer in London and she said, oh, yes, they've been increasing numbers for some years, but they all want to make a shirt. And I've never made anything for people. I'd like to make a shirt. And you explain to them probably the most complicated thing you could start, oh, it can't be that difficult, they say, and they buy a pattern and the material, and off they go.
[12:50]
A
How many men survive the intricate and difficult process of making a shirt? We can only guess. But in the past, the emphasis of domestic sewing was on saving money and thriftiness, being able to have fashions that you couldn't otherwise afford. But Barbara is highlighting an important change. Buying fast fashion is now cheaper than making your own. So people have found new purposes in making for themselves, their friends, and families. Barbara also believes that stitching changes our relationship to consumerism, and we develop a greater respect for the 70 million workers, mainly women, who sew for a living.
[13:38]
B
I think the connection is, just look at your jeans. You know, who made them, what did you pay for them? If you spend £20 on a T shirt, how much of that £20 is the maker getting? Usually disturbingly little. So I think that the making of things at home can bring with it, and often does, according to the women I talk to, the greater awareness of clothing trades, the textile trades, the social justice side of clothing. There's one photograph in the book. It's two hands and a button trying to sew a button on. We know from a recent survey that not many people know how to sew a button on. I think a photograph is, for me, quite symbolic of a major problem and a major. It's a symbol of our relationship to consumerism generally.
[14:25]
A
Which brings us squarely to one of the great difficulties in thinking about stitching for one set of people, it brings great joy. At its best, a way to express our identity, to create something that brings us pleasure, to enjoy the skills and process of making something. And then for others employed in the textile industry, it can bring misery, long hours, appalling unsafe conditions, low pay, modern slavery, and even death.
[15:00]
B
So we buy all this stuff and we wear our new garments, I think seven or eight times before they're discarded. They're discarded for numerous reasons. Buttons come off is one reason. Oh, can't wear it, or people have changed shape or fashions have changed or it's just got kind of forgotten about and the joy of shopping has taken over again. And off, off we go. So what I find interesting is this renaissance, undoubted renaissance in sewing for yourself, whatever gender you are. And then this undoubted rise in the consumption of fast fashion. Home sewing isn't stopping, it's growing. It grew in Covid. And in Covid it was often a way of people feeling useful because they were making protective items for health workers. And we need to remember that some people really like working in factories. It brings companionship. We mustn't be totally negative about factories, but my goodness, in the clothing trade, clothing industry, it's largely not like that. Some of the big, most familiar labels are paying below the national wage. It happens with big names who are employing people in Eastern Europe, for example, and it happens here in the uk lest as a case in point. So we mustn't think that it's kind of those problems have been sort of exported to the Far east from us. They are here and getting a grip on that. Becoming a thoughtful consumer, I think is one of the things that sewing yourself can help with.
[16:31]
A
So how does Barbara act as a thoughtful consumer herself?
[16:36]
B
I like buying clothes. My family will tell you because I've bought what some people would call investment pieces. I am wearing things that I bought 25 years ago. I don't wear them every year, but I wear them. And I also now dig down. Yes, it's okay. You put on your website you've got an anti slavery policy or something. What does it actually mean? What are you actually doing and where are you getting your materials from? How much do you know about your supply chain? Usually very little. Are you a B core? You know, that's a good thing. And I do ask myself those kinds of questions. And I was looking the other day at a well known high street band that was advertising some warm underwear as cotton. And I thought, oh yeah, let's have a look at the label. 52% cotton. The rest is acrylic and elastane. So you have to teach yourself, really. Although there are some websites very, very helpful on all of this, the idea that acrylic may take 200 years to degrade it seems to me enormously shocking, some of this.
[17:42]
A
So Barbara's rules are buy investment pieces, look at the label. So what would your top three or four rules be?
[17:53]
B
Don't buy immediately, don't rush at it. Think and go back another day and you'll find that that amazing thing you really thought you couldn't live without actually sort of faded slightly into the. And this is not what I'm good at, but it's what I know I should be good at is to get all my clothes out, a great big huge mountain of them, and give away those that maybe don't fit me anymore or I don't like anymore and have a sort. Have a sort. But when you love textiles the way I do, I just think, you know, that is hard. So I think another top rule would be, apart from thinking twice or thrice before you buy, is to think, well, the next thing I buy, is it going to work with something I've already got? What am I aiming for here? And I'm trying to discipline myself so that. I mean, in theory, if you looked at my wardrobe, you think she doesn't need any more clothes the rest of her life.
[18:56]
A
In her book, Barbara says, I want to celebrate those who sew and to reinstate their largely untold narrative into what we choose to remember of today and the recent past. It's a phenomenon with its own history and cultural memory. But she adds that however we stitch it is work that is undervalued or unseen.
[19:23]
B
I suppose it's partly. It's a bit like the air we breathe. We're not going to talk about that all the time. And we're sitting here enclosed, all these stitches, let's get on with life. That sort of absence in our minds. I suppose it's glued to the idea that it's women's work. And women's work as we know is overlooked, marginalized, misunderstood, devalued, underpaid, and so on, so forth. Things have changed a bit, but by and large it's easy to ignore and to label as women's work. So it's marginal. And that seems to be under pinned in a rather probably quite dangerous way really, that children are coming out of school without much practical confidence, without much practical skill. And I think that is dangerous. It's depriving people of one important element of being human, which is to make, you know, we've got an opposable thumb, two opposable thumbs, most cases, let's get on with it and use it and celebrate it. I think this, not looking at it is also part of a. The educational problem is part of a wider problem where we regularly divide brain work from handwork, head work from manual. If you do head work, you're likely to earn more. If you earn what's thought of as manual work, you are likely to earn less. I mean, it's a deep division, it's a social division, it's an economic division. And we are in that sense also overlooking the way that human, humankind isn't made like that. Your hands are a kind of brain. And children learn so much from making. So I, I think there are these different forces at work, really, which make it easy to overlook sewing. And it looks easy, doesn't it, a needle and thread, you know, there's nothing to. It must be easy, so it must be not very valuable or interesting.
[21:19]
A
And into the breach left by the inadequate teaching of subjects at schools that develop handwork has stepped social media and books enabling adults to catch up what they missed earlier.
[21:35]
B
So there are lots of, lots of books about how to sew. There's no doubt that people want that. And there'll be a lot of websites and some of them really good are stepping in and covering the hole that's left by these decisions made about schooling. And people who may not have had a very good time at school learning to sew are now having a really good time on their Friday night Internet sewing group or whatever they've got. And so that side seems to me very positive at the moment. People making use of social media in a big way to share what they're doing, share their makes, put the photos up and so on, as well as really meeting in real life.
[22:15]
A
Barbara understands very well the strong connections with memories and emotions that sewing brings people who enjoy doing this. She's hugely articulate about why this is. One reason is an appreciation for cloth itself.
[22:36]
B
The love of fabric, I think, drives a lot of makers, whether they're quilting or whether they're doing hobby kind of felt work or something, or whether they're doing very high skilled self tailoring or something right across all those different groups of people who do so. It's love of cloth is a very important one and that's a clearly a multisensory relationship. People hoard cloth. Mary Beth Stout she's an American sociologist and she wrote a book on quilting from a sociological point of view. It's called quilting the Fabric of Everyday Life. And a lot of American women that she talked to felt slightly guilty. So they use the word hoard or stash, a. Because they're slightly addicted, addiction, language. But it also because they felt a bit guilty that they were taking time to themselves, away from their families. Sometimes they would sneak another bag of fabric for the next quilt into their house when their husband was away. And so love of fabric, it mustn't be forgotten. And that's everything from people who fastidiously only want to sew with natural fabrics, or people who love a bit of glitter, a bit of stretch, you know, and these. All the different things that are emerging now that we didn't think of as fabric before. Anyway, I think we start loving cloth. We all know children and their attachment to their blanket or their teddy bear and how distressed, really distressed they get. If that's lost or taken from them, it starts early. And that's about the smell and the feel.
[24:13]
A
But beyond the cloth. Barbara believes that when we stitch for ourselves, something complex is taking place within us, something that isn't simple.
[24:25]
B
Sewing, especially if it's a bit repetitive, is soothing and it brings out. Is it dopamine? How to pronounce it, as well as being fulfilling. And a lot of people said to me, and this really did hit me, actually, how many people said it? When they're sewing, they're thinking of the moment. They're in the moment, deeply in the moment. The outside world might not exist, but at the same time, their sewing hands remind them of their mothers or their aunties or the thinking of past people. And in the end, again, I've said this on several occasions, they're also thinking forwards. They're wanting to complete it. Oh, this is good. It's turning out well. She'll like it. They're making it for somebody else or whatever. And so they're projecting forwards, but so it includes so many. I don't know what the words are for this. In a way, it's a sort of transcendent thing, this tiny thing.
[25:20]
A
The needle has been with us for thousands of years of human existence. There's a needle that's been found in a cave in Siberia that's nearly 50,000 years old. It could be threaded today and reused just as it is. It's little surprise then, that we have a special connection to the skill of using it.
[25:45]
B
I don't know how much that's true of other crafts. Anyway, we all know when we pick up a needle, there's this connectivity, there's this feeling of having agency over something. Even just cutting out a piece of cloth correctly is a very satisfied, scary because it's expensive and you put your shears through it and it's crunching away and you think, I've got it right. So at all stages of making and using familiar tools that you may have inherited, one person in the book who told me about keeping her threads in an old Russian biscuit tin that had been in her family a long time. And so it's not just the action, it's the stuff that you're working with. It's the cloth, it's the tools, it's the space. I mean, Sue Stuart Smith has written this brilliant book called the well Gardened Mind. I think somebody needs to write a book about the well stitched mind. I think there are so many dimensions. As a historian, I'm not sure I'm totally equipped to get it. I can see it's there. And they are people who talk about their sewing, talk about it with passion and they get passionate about their, about their sewing machines. You get really, really not only just attached to the machine, but it, because it's, it's the biggest tool we have, it's the heaviest tools, most expensive tool and they love it when it's all going right.
[27:11]
A
Thank you to Barbara for her time and her insight into stitching. Haptic and Hue is hosted by me, Jo Andrews, and produced and edited by Bill Taylor. It's an independent production supported entirely by its listeners who bring us ideas and generously fund us via Buy Me a Coffee or by Becoming a friend of Hannah. This keeps the podcast independent and free from advertising and sponsorship. It also brings you extra content every month with a separate podcast called Travels with Textiles, hosted by Bill Taylor and me. You can find out more about this episode and friends of Haptic and hu at www. Hapticandhew.com this is the last episode in series 5 of Haptic and Hughes Tales of Textiles. We'll be back on the first Thursday of January 2024 with the first episode of series six. Until then, we wish you a joyful, festive season and a very, very peaceful new year. Until then, thank you for listening and enjoy your making. But before you go, I wanted to end this episode and this series with an extract from Barbara's chapter on mending. She says mending is hope and optimism, even when it is a choreography, because it is for life, not against it. While budget self sufficiency, resistance to over consumption, and environmental sustainability may all come into play when we recycle darn or patch, we may also be mustering the means to preserve emotion and memory to maintain attachments, for instance, through saving a much loved garment that has been part of our life for a long time. Human resilience takes many mental and physical forms. Stitching to mend and recreate is one of them.
[29:45]
B
SA.