Sometimes, I’m not sure which is more engaging, old needlework and quilts, or old ephemera about them. In the February 1933 Needlecraft Magazine: The Home Arts Magazine, there is a “musing” about the state of the economy and how people never want to recognize there is a problem at all, until a recession is apparent. In between the beginning and final sentence, she writes about the importance of “fashioning bits of embroidery and needlework which add real charm to any household.” The writer of this particular letter on this editorial page, signs herself “A.M.S.” First, I will share her final sentence that seems to tidily sum up her intent of sharing the joys of simple living:
If to our recent depression can be credited a tendency to the return of such simple living, we can be truly thankful for the trials we have experienced.
The date of the magazine brings to mind the fact that 1933 lies between Black Friday, 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression, and Pearl Harbor, 1941, the beginning of World War II.
The 1930s were a turbulent time. My parents were both working and they postponed their wedding date until 1937 because my Dad was helping to support his mother. My mother was not a quilter, but she loved to embroider, and she also made a stab at attempting to crochet. For years, she saved a square in “popcorn stitch” that a friend had taught her to make.
In 1933, no one could have foreseen the events of the 1940s when women would go to work by the thousands to help support the war cause. World War II changed the world, and in its wake, left approximately 60 million people dead, by war’s end.
The 1940s found women on the assembly lines, symbolically represented in artistic interpretations, by two different artists, as “Rosie, the Riveter.” In retrospect, the 1930s was a “simpler” decade when more women were at home, scrounging to make do, creating feedsack dresses for themselves and their children, and attempting to prepare nutritious meals with what they had on hand. By one account, in New Hampshire, those who lived on farms were the least affected by bad economic times. There were always eggs to gather, or milk from goats or cows.
We see many quilts that were made in the 1930s, some in pastel colors, others with butterflies that seem to encompass “hope.” Stores such as Woolworth’s always had a wide selection of doilies, table runners, and other home items to embroider.
The writer of the 1933 letter sets forth another statement worth sharing:
A home, made thus attractive by the handwork of those who truly love and cherish it, and where there exists a common bond of enjoyment in the simple beauties of life and nature, is to our mind the greatest blessing that any of us may hope for.
No matter what adversity occurs, the gift that women possess is a desire to make any situation better by adding some beauty to it. They realize that a house is just a structure, while a home is made with tender loving care. Beauty nourishes the soul. Often, lovely decor in the home includes needlework: work wrought with ingenuity, skill, and needle and thread. No matter how difficult financial times become, people will still find ways to add beauty to their homes with works of their own making and of their own vision.
Patricia Cummings
