Author threads tale of needle craft
What was big in needlecraft at the time Marlon Brando appeared in On the Waterfront?
If that question has ever troubled you, Rosemary McLeod has the answer to it and and many others that may never have occurred to you.
Her new book With Bold Needle and Thread is almost impossible to define: a how-to guide to needle-work; a celebration of women’s magazines; a defence of home crafts and an examination of shifting styles in their social context.
Above all it is an elegant exhibition of the home-made, lavishly illustrated by former Listener photographer Jane Ussher.
‘‘My mission here is to reclaim the homemade,’’ McLeod said.
Each chapter begins with a list of whatever dominated the news of the day, be it depression, world war, the Cuban missile crisis or Beatlemania.
McLeod said her generation grew up in harder times.
‘‘Depression, war – we grew up when that history was very present.’’
Among her substantial library of craft work samples, McLeod has a little embroidered picture of a ship at sea dating from the beginning of the war, which at the time was probably as emotionally significant as it was ornamental.
‘‘Whoever was going away in that ship might not be coming back.’’
Crafts took a back seat to women’s liberation for a long time, McLeod said.
‘‘There was the period in the 1970s when feminism appeared and anything to do with domestic skills was denigrated. They said it was a trap and a denial of intelligence.’’
McLeod said she has always made jam and that is not a denial of her intellect. With this book and her previous one, Thrift to Fantasy, she is affirming that it is OK for women to do these things, she said.
‘‘Because of my professional reputation and my column, I think there is probably a certain amount of relief that someone of my background would validate what they do, which is not a bad thing.’’
McLeod began the project as a craft book, with excerpts and illustrations from women’s magazines of various periods.
‘‘Initially I wanted to share my interest and affection for women’s magazines as a kind of history in their lives,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s a celebration of women’s magazines and the way they connect women all over the world in a community of interest, and that interest is shaped by what is going on in the world.’’
In harder times, before cheap Chinesemade goods flooded New Zealand stores, spending time making things was a thrifty thing to do but also recreation for hardworking homemakers.
Women could set their own goals, choose their own medium, design and colours and, for once in their busy lives, achieve something, McLeod said.
‘‘This gives a sense of completion, which there never is with housework.’’
Many women do not take any down-time to rest and renew their energy, she said.
‘‘A lot of women don’t do that. They think playing tennis is play. Well it’s not really; it’s competitive and it’s keeping yourself fit.’’
Crafts were a justifiably productive activity, she said.
‘‘It’s a kind of private reflective pastime that women have allowed themselves with a sort of argument that it is useful.’’
Since the attacks of feminism, crafts have made a strong comeback, with racks of purely craft books appearing in magazine shops and recently, for the first time in years, Women’s Weekly published a knitting pattern.
With Bold Needle & Thread – Adventures in Vintage Needlecraft, by Rosemary McLeod, photography by Jane Ussher, RRP $55.