while I'm on the subject, YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

[truepenny]

I really don't want to pick on Bruce Seeds, because the fact that he came to my attention under inauspicious circumstances is no fault of his, but there's this thing in his FAQ:

Do you really make these yourself? Yes, the cutting, the piecing, the sewing and the ironing are all done by me, with one exception: the stitching process that binds the top, the batting and the back together requires special equipment. So I pay a service provider to do that step for me, in a pattern and thread color of my choosing. For most of my quilts, that service is provided by Patched Works of Elm Grove, Wisconsin.

Now, if you go to Patched Works' site, they do in fact have a special machine called a long arm, so what Mr. Seeds says here is not wrong. On the other hand, and the thing that's bugging me, "the stitching process that binds the top, the batting, and the back together" is called quilting. It's what makes something, you know, a quilt. The fact that he chooses to outsource this part of the process--while a totally legitimate choice with which I have no beef (although I'd prefer it if he'd phrased it slightly differently, so as not to give the impression that quilts cannot be made without special machinery)--really does reinforce the already somewhat more than subliminal impression that a divide has been created here between The Artist (design) and The Craftsperson (mere manual labor), and again makes the Milwaukee Art Museum's choice to showcase his work with their early American quilt exhibit--especially given the number of superb whitework quilts they had--almost painfully ironic.

Again, I think Mr. Seeds' quilts are lovely, and I do not think there's anything wrong with having one's quilts machine-quilted by a third party. (I love Rose Wilder Lane's comment in The Woman's Day Book of American Needlework about what nonsense it is to romanticize the non-technological past: her mother and aunts and grandmothers would have leaped at the chance to use a sewing machine.) My gripe is about semantics and self-presentation. And the valuation or devaluation of artforms created and practiced by women.

And now I really am going to shut up about this.

Comments

RE: Little House

[disassembly_rsn]

I believe I remember the incident you're talking about.

It was after the Ingalls family moved to what became the town of De Smet in Dakota Territory. Laura would have been in her teens, I think. It had been arranged that during the summer she would take a job in town - the lady of the business needed help making shirts, as there were enough single men in and around town that shirt-making was a paying proposition.

The business had the first sewing machine that I think Laura had ever seen. Laura herself didn't touch it - she was there for the fine details of making buttonholes and putting on buttons - but there was a sort of wistful attitude among the distaff side of the Ingalls household that you could only really justify the expense of a machine like that as part of a paying business.

It might have been in LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE, maybe.

Re: Little House

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

They do get a sewing machine later on. I want to say that they used it for Mary's traveling outfit, but can't remember for sure. I'm pretty sure they used the sewing machine for part of Laura's wedding dress and/or trousseau. It was pretty clearly used for specialized sewing, like tucks (IIRC), rather than "ordinary" stitching.

Re: Little House

[stotangirl.livejournal.com]

Well, now I had to track down my copies of the books! :) The part I was thinking of is in These Happy Golden Years. Laura's father buys a sewing machine as a surprise, because, yes, Laura's getting married and Mary's coming home, so there will be more sewing to do. They specifically mention how easy it makes doing tucks, but it sounds like they use the machine for making an entire dress.

The thing that I remembered (that prompted my comment) was how they admired how even the stitching was, and how it was so much better than hand-stitching.

But disassembly_rsn is right: the first time Laura sees a sewing machine is in Little Town on the Prairie when she works as a seamstress in town, and she doesn't touch it--she does sort of hide behind it, so she's blocked from being seen from the street.

Re: Little House

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I remember having a "comfortable" sort of feeling when I first read that book at six, because the sewing machine Garth Williams drew was very similar to my grandmother's. She used her mother's treadle machine all her life, never an electric version. I was fascinated by it, and liked the look much more than my mother's electric sewing machine.