Saturday, March 20, 2010

Women's Work?

I wanted to show you the great Hellboy embroidery I received, from JojoBooster in the Phat Quarter swap, on Flickr:


Yep, you saw that right, Hellboy embroidery. A great example of embroidery that is not all flowers & alphabets. I think we've moved far away from the old school notion of embroidery as women's work & women's subjects (whatever that really means) .
Of course, there's also my own example, that I sent to LisaLady, in the Phat Quarter swap:
Yep, Lobo in embroidery, again not very girly & not a traditional woman's subject.
I read recently, in the comments section of the DonkeyWolf blog, someone who basically believed that embroidery was a woman's endeavor, filled with girly women's subject matter (like we where back in some other era, where women, upper class women, that is, sat in drawing rooms, embroidering, learning obscure languages, waiting to be married off). Now, it's definitely true that the examples I show above where both made by women, but there are plenty of examples out there of manly embroidery (like Johnny Murder or Mr. X Stitch) & I have to say that our subjects here do not fit this antiquated notion...
What do you think? Is embroidery still women's work? Should we, as women, be doing more genteel subjects? Should manbroiderers cut it out & stop embroidering altogether? These seem like rhetorical questions to me. You can't turn back the clock & even if we could, would we really want to?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it's cool. It's good to be inventive and individual in anything. It helps expand the mind. :)

Debbie @ OtRD said...

I love that they are NOT flowers and alphabets. Women can do so much more and they look great!

cheri said...

it's refreshing to see embroidery that does not feature flowers. i'm not so craft-sy myself, but when i do the occasional cross stitch, i do the flowers and houses and stuff because there are only the patterns available! wish there were more...

stopping by from SITS :)

Unknown said...

Thank you Lauren, Debbie, Cheri!

I'm not sure about cross-stitch, but anyone looking for great embroidery patterns that are beyond the ordinary, should check out Sublime Stitching. She (Jenny Hart) has all kinds of patterns that are fun, modern, cool & unique, some of them designed by guest artists that are pretty well know in the art world. I believe she has a little bit in the way of cross stitch stuff. She has several great books on embroidery, kits & supplies available.

There's also Urban Embroidery, not quite as "artsy" but still beyond the norm. She also does cute, cool craft tutorials, that can be fun to try.

Both are on-line. Sublime Stitching patterns are currently for personal use only. Urban Embroidery ones can be used for resale.

Thanks for your comments!

Shawn said...

Interesting stuff, indeed...

Just visiting over from SITS-----have a great day!

Art Garden Diva said...

Stopping by from SITS also. I think the great thing about 'art' in any form, is that we can all follow our own creative bliss!

Katinka said...

Stopping by from SITS and wishing you a great day!!!

Chennifer said...

thanks for dropping by my blog - lovely work!!!!

//Jen

Crafty Girls Workshop said...

I enjoy seeing non flowery embroidery. Personally, i still lean toward the cutesy stuff but that's just me. I'm still trying to branch out a little. I've seen patterns for sewing and quilting that men have done and they are usually quite amazing! I guess because a lot of men who quilt were engineers and architects and see it as a mathematical thing. Have you see the blog called Quilt Dad? He did some neat embroidery too (although it wasn't as interesting as yours) Stopping by from SITS.

Anna