s03senecal

Out of a Closet
by Nikki Senecal

I am an accomplished needleworker. As embarrassed as I have been to say it, there it is. Back in my days as a graduate student, I made the mistake of talking about attending needlework classes and was teased as a result. I was reminded of this when I reviewed The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, a feminist analysis of the needle arts from the Middle Ages to the present. In Roszika Parker’s book, a feminist scholar interested in handwork reflects that she too soon “learned never to tell people I embroider.” (Annmarie Turnbull, interview with the author, 1981; qtd in Parker, 214.) This sociology professor and I both experienced a hangover from Victorian times: things relegated to the “feminine sphere” cannot easily be reconciled with professionalism. That is, even though femininity is no longer as associated with rigidly defined gender roles, embroidery is, and thus it is difficult to reconcile with “real work”.

It’s sometimes embarrassing to ally myself with the needlework crowd—they’re portrayed as feminine, domestic, dull, and conservative. But my recent trip to “cross-stitch camp” in Tulsa with my old friend Marisa reminded me that in any community of women there will be feminist moments. You just have to know how to look for them. The needle-wielding crowd can be progressive and intelligent. Needlework magazines, primarily pattern collections, for example, also print scholarly articles about the history of the craft, indicating a degree of brainpower among its readers. Needleworkers have been on the internet since the beginning; they’re not the Luddites you might think.
Others are often skeptical about my ability to interact with fellow needleworkers, however, assuming that I will find them conservative and dull. I only have one story to confirm their views: one year, I visited the Spirit of Cross-stitch in Valley Forge with an old friend in June and in Sacramento with grad school friends in September. At a class in Sacramento, a woman behind me was telling her tablemate that she had attended Valley Forge. I turned to see if I recognized her, as I explained that I had been to both shows too. The astounded tablemate exclaimed, “Your husband let you go to two?!” I didn’t know whether I should begin my explanation with the “husband” part or the “let” part, so I smiled weakly and turned back to my work.

My trip to Oklahoma would no doubt be different. It was, after all, in Oklahoma and my previous encounters had taken place in or near cities on the coasts. What’s more, the world was preparing for a war I was resisting. Finally, Camp Wannasew (ugh!) was being held at a camp owned by a group of churches in Oklahoma and Arkansas, Camp Christian. Even at our most religious, Marisa and I had been Catholics, a distinct minority in the state. To deny that I had some trepidation would be fruitless. Marisa, ever the optimist, argued that we had a rental car and could escape if necessary. I countered that we didn’t know where to go.

The trip, of course, didn’t turn out quite as I expected. There was no need to escape, but we had unexpected roommates (four of them!), three bunk beds per room. Because we left our work out at our tables overnight (for those of us who did go to bed!), we had assigned seats. Our tablemates turned out to be an interesting and varied lot; they were from Atlanta, Dallas, and Oklahoma. Marisa is the archivist at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; another woman was a part-time preschool teacher and mother of four; one was a flight attendant who was out on disability; another worked for her husband in his photography business; and finally, one worked for the Oklahoma government while she studied for her MA in English—only one would have described herself as domestic. While we stitched we talked about needlework, about our work and families, and about English coursework (I’m sure that thrilled the others).

One woman who spent “a lot” of money on new patterns and supplies joked that she was going to have to repay her husband with sex. Although she was kidding, there were many ways in which much of the talk at the camp was self-deprecating and at the same time infantalized attendees’ husbands. When we went around the room introducing ourselves, one woman claimed to have five children: “a thirty six year old husband, two dogs and two horses.” Another woman had never been away overnight since her four year old was born; she was conflicted about whether to turn her cell phone off. Response from the crowd was evenly divided. At the same time, there were many women who seemed like they would never ask themselves a similar question. This was their “me” time, and they were determined to enjoy it. Although many stitchers I’ve talked to about this article have cited women’s community as one of the main factors for continuing their engagement, there was a small way in which there was an apparent wariness of being a group of women only. It was as if we had to invoke husbands to ward off images of lesbianism or to find approval for our meeting since it seemed so subversive to be enjoying this time away. One of my favorite stitching tee-shirts reads “Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society”—it was as if this were the feeling among us. Our “selfish” absorption—that interrupted our domestic and familial responsibilities—was indeed seditious.

Although I was less worried about the gender implications of our gathering, I was still worried about being a subversive: being a liberal peacenik among conservatives. War talk, to my relief, was limited. The son one of my tablemates had recently returned from Afghanistan and was on his way to Germany. A member of the Special Ops, he is in all likelihood in Iraq now. His mother clearly preferred not to discuss the impending war with us. Another woman—an Air Force librarian who had been a civilian librarian in Vietnam in the late sixties—loudly spoke out against the war. Those making the decisions had never experienced war like she had. Her word seemed to be final. I wonder if those in disagreement would have been more vocal if the retreat had taken place only one week later, when the war had begun.

In the airport, I wondered aloud to Marisa what I would write about this weekend for a feminist audience—like my experience at the breast cancer walk, there were feminist moments at this event. This led to engaging discussion about “the opposite of fraternal.” We found it interesting that—with the exception of sororities—there are rarely everyday discussions about “the opposite of fraternal” or the sororal (a word my computer does not even recognize). We considered whether the word was unwieldy or whether the concept were something we rarely examine in this sort of context: sure there’s sisterhood in sororities and women’s colleges, sisterhood in feminist organizations, but is there sisterhood when the group of women don’t have formal organizational ties? Or when the ties are flosses and linen threads? It brings to mind one of my new stitching friends. She pulled out a project she had been working on, all of her flosses were in a tangle (most keep their threads on bobbins to avoid this problem). But she could work with them. She was determined not to let others’ focus on classification ruin her good time. We can learn a lot from this method.


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Out of a Closet by Nikki Senecal I am an accomplished needleworker. As embarrassed as I have been to say it, there it is. Back in my days as a graduate student, I made the mistake of talking about attending needlework classes and was teased as a result. I was reminded of this when I reviewed The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, a feminist analysis of the needle arts from the Middle Ages to the present. In Roszika Parker’s book, a feminist scholar interested in handwork reflects that she too soon “learned never to tell people I embroider.” (Annmarie Turnbull, interview with the author, 1981; qtd in Parker, 214.) This sociology professor and I both experienced a hangover from Victorian times: things relegated to the “feminine sphere” cannot easily be reconciled with professionalism. That is, even though femininity is no longer as associated with rigidly defined gender roles, embroidery is, and thus it is difficult to reconcile with “real work”. It’s sometimes embarrassing to ally myself with the needlework crowd—they’re portrayed as feminine, domestic, dull, and conservative. But my recent trip to “cross-stitch camp” in Tulsa with my old friend Marisa reminded me that in any community of women there will be feminist moments. You just have to know how to look for them. The needle-wielding crowd can be progressive and intelligent. Needlework magazines, primarily pattern collections, for example, also print scholarly articles about the history of the craft, indicating a degree of brainpower among its readers. Needleworkers have been on the internet since the beginning; they’re not the Luddites you might think. Others are often skeptical about my ability to interact with fellow needleworkers, however, assuming that I will find them conservative and dull. I only have one story to confirm their views: one year, I visited the Spirit of Cross-stitch in Valley Forge with an old friend in June and in Sacramento with grad school friends in September. At a class in Sacramento, a woman behind me was telling her tablemate that she had attended Valley Forge. I turned to see if I recognized her, as I explained that I had been to both shows too. The astounded tablemate exclaimed, “Your husband let you go to two?!” I didn’t know whether I should begin my explanation with the “husband” part or the “let” part, so I smiled weakly and turned back to my work. My trip to Oklahoma would no doubt be different. It was, after all, in Oklahoma and my previous encounters had taken place in or near cities on the coasts. What’s more, the world was preparing for a war I was resisting. Finally, Camp Wannasew (ugh!) was being held at a camp owned by a group of churches in Oklahoma and Arkansas, Camp Christian. Even at our most religious, Marisa and I had been Catholics, a distinct minority in the state. To deny that I had some trepidation would be fruitless. Marisa, ever the optimist, argued that we had a rental car and could escape if necessary. I countered that we didn’t know where to go. The trip, of course, didn’t turn out quite as I expected. There was no need to escape, but we had unexpected roommates (four of them!), three bunk beds per room. Because we left our work out at our tables overnight (for those of us who did go to bed!), we had assigned seats. Our tablemates turned out to be an interesting and varied lot; they were from Atlanta, Dallas, and Oklahoma. Marisa is the archivist at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; another woman was a part-time preschool teacher and mother of four; one was a flight attendant who was out on disability; another worked for her husband in his photography business; and finally, one worked for the Oklahoma government while she studied for her MA in English—only one would have described herself as domestic. While we stitched we talked about needlework, about our work and families, and about English coursework (I’m sure that thrilled the others). One woman who spent “a lot” of money on new patterns and supplies joked that she was going to have to repay her husband with sex. Although she was kidding, there were many ways in which much of the talk at the camp was self-deprecating and at the same time infantalized attendees’ husbands. When we went around the room introducing ourselves, one woman claimed to have five children: “a thirty six year old husband, two dogs and two horses.” Another woman had never been away overnight since her four year old was born; she was conflicted about whether to turn her cell phone off. Response from the crowd was evenly divided. At the same time, there were many women who seemed like they would never ask themselves a similar question. This was their “me” time, and they were determined to enjoy it. Although many stitchers I’ve talked to about this article have cited women’s community as one of the main factors for continuing their engagement, there was a small way in which there was an apparent wariness of being a group of women only. It was as if we had to invoke husbands to ward off images of lesbianism or to find approval for our meeting since it seemed so subversive to be enjoying this time away. One of my favorite stitching tee-shirts reads “Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society”—it was as if this were the feeling among us. Our “selfish” absorption—that interrupted our domestic and familial responsibilities—was indeed seditious. Although I was less worried about the gender implications of our gathering, I was still worried about being a subversive: being a liberal peacenik among conservatives. War talk, to my relief, was limited. The son one of my tablemates had recently returned from Afghanistan and was on his way to Germany. A member of the Special Ops, he is in all likelihood in Iraq now. His mother clearly preferred not to discuss the impending war with us. Another woman—an Air Force librarian who had been a civilian librarian in Vietnam in the late sixties—loudly spoke out against the war. Those making the decisions had never experienced war like she had. Her word seemed to be final. I wonder if those in disagreement would have been more vocal if the retreat had taken place only one week later, when the war had begun. In the airport, I wondered aloud to Marisa what I would write about this weekend for a feminist audience—like my experience at the breast cancer walk, there were feminist moments at this event. This led to engaging discussion about “the opposite of fraternal.” We found it interesting that—with the exception of sororities—there are rarely everyday discussions about “the opposite of fraternal” or the sororal (a word my computer does not even recognize). We considered whether the word was unwieldy or whether the concept were something we rarely examine in this sort of context: sure there’s sisterhood in sororities and women’s colleges, sisterhood in feminist organizations, but is there sisterhood when the group of women don’t have formal organizational ties? Or when the ties are flosses and linen threads? It brings to mind one of my new stitching friends. She pulled out a project she had been working on, all of her flosses were in a tangle (most keep their threads on bobbins to avoid this problem). But she could work with them. She was determined not to let others’ focus on classification ruin her good time. We can learn a lot from this method.