Stitching the Self: Identity and the Needle Arts

Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Plates
Figures and Table
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Stitching the Self
	Piecing Together
	Scope and Organization
	Emerging Identities
	Elaborating Identities
	Recovering Identities
	Stitching the Self
Part One Emerging Identity: Reconsidering the Narratives of the Needle
1 The Identity of an Embroidering Woman: The Needle Arts in Brussels, Belgium, 1850–1914
	Introduction
	The Place of the Needle Arts in Young Women’s Education
	Case Study: Hélène De Rudder, née Du Ménil (1869–1962)
	A New Identity Through the Needle Arts? Female Needleworkers Gain Recognition
	Conclusion
2 “Experiments in silk and gold work afterwards to bloom”: The Embroidering of Jane Burden Morris1
	Prick and Pounce: Laying the Ground
	Threading the Needle: Artistry and Embroidery
	Embroidering: Fashioning the Self
	Finishing: Ties that Bind
	Conclusion
3 Becoming the Boss of Your Knitting: Elizabeth Zimmermann and the Emergence of Critical Knitting
	State of Mid-century Play in Professional Knitting and Knitting Craft smanship
	“Dear Knitter”: Dialogic Transformation in Personal and Institutional Identifications
	Intellectual Property: New Forms of Capital Among Knitters
	Conclusion
4 “Knitting is the saving of life; Adrian has taken it up too”: Needlework, Gender, and the Bloomsbury Group
	Richmond and Asheham: Loose Threads
	“I find embroidery so soothing to the head”: Bloomsbury Women, Convalescence, and Craft
	“[D]eliberately vulgar and as idly pretentious”: Bloomsbury Masculinity, Effeminacy, and Embroidery
	Coda
Part Two Elaborating Identity: Expressing Ideology, Craft ing Community
5 Whig’s Defeat : Stitching Settler Culture, Politics, and Identity
	Introduction
	Defining Whig’s Defeat : Red and Green, and Organic Appliqué
	Middle-class Sensibilities and Victorian Femininity
	Whig’s Defeat as the McPherson Wedding Quilt
	Articulating her Politics: Campbell’s Whig’s Defeat
	Conclusion
6 “From Prison to Citizenship,” 1910: The Making and Display of a Suffragist Banner
	Memories and Meanings
	Making the Banner: Ann Macbeth and the Glasgow School of Art
	The Banner on Display: Glasgow and London
	Stitching the Self
	Conclusion
7 Our Lady of the Snows : Settlement, Empire, and “The Children of Canada” in the Needlework of Mary Seton Watts (1848–1938)
	Material Belonging
	Voluntary Social Action
	Artisanal Training
	British Child Migration Movement: The Child- citizen
	Conclusion
Part Three Recovering Identity: Locating the Self Through Needlework
8 “Je me declare Dieu-Mère, Femme Créateur”: Johanna Wintsch’s Needlework at the Swiss Psychiatric Asylums Burghölzli and Rheinau, 1922–1925
	Crafting in the Asylum
	Early Signs of Mental Illness and Institutionalization
	Burghhölzli and Rheinau (1922–1925)
	An Unruly Patient
	Needlework and Discipline
	Patient Experience
	Material Agency
	Needlework as Solace
	Needlework as Bargaining Chip
	Hans Prinzhorn and Patient Art
	Conclusion
9 Hybrid Language: The Interstitial Stitches of Anna Torma’s Embroideries
	Feminisms
	L’écriture feminine
	Embodied Touch
	Collecting as Female Fetish
	Stitching the Self
10 Suturing My Soul: In Pursuit of the Broderie de Bayeux
	The Importance of Naming: What the Bayeux Embroidery Is and Is Not
	In Search of My Matrilineal Heritage in Bayeux
	Materiality
	Cauterized and Sutured
	“A Fascination with the Needle”: Toward a Poetics of Embroidery
	Coda: “Heal Your Own Heart”
Notes
Index