Needlework
Oh, people. People, people, people, I am so tired of dislike of needlework being used as a stand-in for making a young female character actually interesting. I see this mostly in middle-grade fantasies, mostly. Not so much in YA, although I don’t know if that’s because I’m not seeing as much secondary world YA as I’d like. It sometimes goes ( Read more... )
I once helped teach the Pages' School at Pennsic. I did teach some basic embroidery stitches, to boys and girls alike, because it was a skill I had and could share. They all were fascinated at the process of making French knots, and could get behind the concept of embroidering designs on their gear so they could tell whose it was.
My dad taught me to embroider when I was four. My mother is no good at sewing; his grandfather had been a tailor. He was putting together a couple of embroidered pillow kits, one for me and one for my brother, and I thought it looked like fun and wanted to try, so he helped me pick out a kit (a picture of Charlie Brown and Snoopy) and taught me how to read the diagrams and what they meant you to do with the needle. I did really well at everything but Snoopy's satin stitch filling -- I screwed up enough on it so I wound up with not enough yarn to finish it, so Snoopy stayed white from the ground fabric. By the time I got to Charlie Brown's shoes, I had the hang of it.
Reply
Leave a comment