Welcome to Day 14 of my April A to Z Blog Challenge!
N is for Needlework
Does that sound like a boring theme for the letter ‘N’? I’m sure
that pulling out the workbasket in the Victorian era was definitely boring for
many females but learning to sew was also almost a necessity.
If you were from a well-to-do family like the Duncans, my main character Margaret’s employers (current WIP writing), you were expected to do the more decorative kinds of stitching. Rachel, bedridden after an unfortunate accident in Edinburgh, cannot walk but she can use her upper limbs so long as she is propped up comfortably in bed, or on her daybed. Since the little girl is only six years old, the sewing she had learned prior to her injuries was limited to basic running stitches for hemming a piece of material. That changes when Margaret becomes her tutor. Little Rachel cannot be expected to spend all day learning the ‘3Rs’ – reading, writing and arithmetic! Margaret has to become quite creative to inspire Rachel into channelling her frustrations at not being able to walk into something tangible. Encouraging the girl to produce something that she enjoys, and is capable of completing, is a challenge.
Margaret has quickly found that Rachel is quite gifted at
drawing. She thinks developing Rachel’s artistic skills could be a godsend in
lifting the girl’s morale. Unfortunately charcoals and watercolours are not
conducive to keeping the bedlinen clean. Pencil is just about manageable when
the white cotton bedspread on Rachel's wrought iron bed is well covered, the others are so far disastrous and need to be left for her daybed. Currently, that means persuading Mistress Duncan that any mess in the parlour, where afternoon-tea visitors are welcomed, is only temporary till they work out a better routine.
The image above is what poor Rachel should be doing, playing with her dolls and setting them around her room in a play scene, but she can only play with them from a recumbent position now. Though Margaret encourages imaginative play with the dolls, the inability to move around makes it a tedious task for Rachel. Margaret hasn't yet worked out how to fire up Rachel's imagination with this yet, though, when the girl learns to read more fluently, Margaret sees an opening beckoning in writing imaginative stories with Rachel.
More sedentary pastimes are essential for the time being.
It's useful that Margaret herself has been taught many sewing techniques by her mother. Margaret’s background hasn’t been privileged like Rachel and her siblings, but Margaret's father managing a draper’s shop has meant her mother has already taught her many types of sewing. From even younger than Rachel's current six years of age, Margaret learned how to hem handkerchiefs with tiny stitches. From that she progressed to adding a delicate piece of embroidery on one corner, like a fleur-de-lis. When not much older, Margaret helped her mother to baste cut material for customer underclothing that was sold in their shop. Even the most basic chemises had some ruching at the neck and armholes. Rachel isn't yet ready for a full garment for anyone but Margaret is toying with teaching Rachel how to dress her dolls in home-made clothes.
A draper mainly dealt in selling cloth, whereas a haberdasher’s
shop tended to also sell other sewing accoutrements. Margaret’s father’s shop
in Milnathort is a hybrid in that his stock included cloth cut from the bales
from the mills; ready-to-wear-off-the-shelf underclothing for men, women and children; but it also boasted a made-to-measure service which Margaret helped her mother create to order, during her after school time. On the shop shelves there was a small
range of buttons and fastenings; table linens; and small personal items like
handkerchiefs. Cloth and sewing of some sort would have been Margaret's future had she not become a tutor for Rachel.
At almost thirteen when she arrives to tutor for the Duncan family, Margaret has long learned how to cut a dress for herself from a paper pattern. She has sewn a few dresses now for herself when given the necessary tools of the trade. Since her mother used lace to adorn female underclothing and to trim dresses, Margaret also has the skills to do that for herself and for others. Lace making itself is a tedious job, Margaret would rather use already produced lace or even better spend her time reading a book but she knows the basics. Creating a pair of hand made lace gloves as in the photo below would be a challenge Margaret would rise to if necessary, but thankfully Rachel is too young yet for such delicate work,
Embroidering a sampler or doing intricate embroidery isn’t Margaret's favourite pastime but she knows how to do most of the used stitches and can work her way around the necessary instructions to try new stitches. Rachel's talent for artwork can definitely be encouraged in this kind of needlework and, in fact, they have already embarked on a sampler which will be made entirely by Rachel.
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Knitting is also a skill Margaret learned and she can knit a pair of stockings, if necessary, though turning a heel often takes more patience than she wants to
give for it. Gloves are much fiddlier to knit but she has a pair of somewhat battered
lace gloves that she knitted with only a small amount of help from her mother. The
new-fangled crochet that has been popular in the fashion journals arriving from Paris, and other European cities, is something she’s read about but not yet tried
herself. Though using only one implement, one needle, just might be a challenge
for both her and Rachel to learn the basics! The crochet work she's seen, so far, looks easy enough.
Pondering on all the kinds of stitching she can teach Rachel has taken up some time after Margaret’s arrival in Edinburgh. Knitting needles have
tended to get caught up in the little girl’s bedding so that skill has been set
aside for now. Cutting and creating a whole garment is equally too challenging
but embroidery, crochet, and basic lace making is possible. Now all Margaret has to do is
inspire the little one to believe in her capabilities.
Down in the kitchen, Margaret’s childhood friend Jessie also knows how to sew but as a scullery maid come every-other-kind-of-servant (bar the cooking), Poor Jessie is expected to do lots of the household mending. Mending is a never-ending chore and since Jessie has her chapped hands in water, often freezing cold for chunks of the day, any delicate mending is really tricky. Jessie is just as capable at sewing as Margaret is but doing delicate embroidery and stitching proverb samplers seems out of the question.
The reader, when my Ocelot Press novel is published (late 2023) will find some interesting intertwining quirks about the lives of Jessie and Margaret!
Till my next post… happy reading!
Slàinte
PS. You’ll find lots of wonderful stories written by my fellow Ocelot Press authors. Search Ocelot Press on amazon to find out details.
Wikimedia Commons for other images
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