Needlework: Ahead of the Technology Curve

Who would have thought that embroiderers and knitters/crocheters  -- who are needleworkers  too -- are at the forefront of an industrial revolution? In fact we are about 450 years ahead of the pack. Amazed?  Read on. 

Recently, mainstream media reported, thoroughly impressed, on OpenDesk  -- a “revolutionary” approach to manufacturing wooden furniture, and even frame houses.  The only thing that gets shipped is information.  

Here’s how it works. A designer using a computer creates a blueprint. The drawing is sent over the internet to a workshop somewhere near the customer. Here the design is milled by computer-controlled equipment to produce parts which the customer will assemble.

This process saves money by eliminating unwanted stock. The environment benefits.  We are likely to encounter more such excitement as 3-D printing pushes into homes and workshops near us.

For those of us who use needles this is, frankly, so much old hat. Substitute the word “pattern” for blueprint and “artisan” for computer and you will instantly see what I mean.

Patterns  for needlework have been around since the 16^th century, made possible through that earlier disruptive technology, the printing press.  Weighing less than goods, patterns were carried across distance to needle-wielding artisans, who fabricated what clients wanted using materials available locally. 

A pattern book dating from 1606

And while transferring patterns for making furniture over the Net may be “cutting edge”, transporting handwork patterns via the internet is quite routine. 

Contemporary needlework designers have been quick to embrace computers and internet  technology, selling patterns via Etsy and Ebay for the best part of a decade. 

Clearly, how modern or revolutionary a process is, depends on the direction you are looking, forward or backward. And who’s doing the looking, men or women, young or old. So squinting through the eye of my needle, it all looks a bit déjà vu.

Just thinking about it, I experience even more déjà vu.

Beyond knowing how to wield a needle and where to place it, needleworkers acquire two other skills.  Using a pattern implies being able to interpret codes. These codes may be in  the form of a chart or the *k1 p2* instructions in knitting, for example.  Moreover, needlework buffs replicated directions flawlessly and consistently for yards and meters, and for days on end without flagging. Kind of like, well, a computer? Precisely.

 These  aspects of needlework have been recognized in the term “numerical needlework”  that appeared in an article about number crunching, repetitive computations done by hand in the days before electronic computers. And who were the “human computers” with the skill to replicate calculations ad infinitum? Yep, women. In fact way back when, computing power was measured in kilo-girls. I kid you not. 

During World War 2, most of the top-secret code-breaking computational work done at Bletchley Park in England was done by women.

Women working with the Bletchly Park computer in 1943.

So it should  be no surprise that creating a handwork design is similar to designing a computer program, and  charting a pattern or rendering it in letters and asterisk codes, is, well, analogous to programming for a computer, albeit a human one.

This brings to mind another intriguing question. Are needleworkers – today primarily women - at an advantage when it comes to program design and coding because of skills they honed through needlework?  Well the jury is still out on that one.

Still, computer history considers Ada Lovelace, the first program analyst.  Given her socio-economic status, it is probable that in addition to studying maths and science she also did needlework, proving handwork needn’t hold back female development.  And to cite a more modern equivalent there is Admiral Grace Hopper, developer of computer language Cobol, who crocheted and did needlework avidly.

The questions around value of embroidery as a way of teaching intrinsic skills is certainly worth exploring.  Maybe it’s time to apply the logic in Malcom Gladwell’s latest book, David and Goliath.  He maintains that what is commonly perceived as a disadvantage may, in fact, be an advantage when viewed from a different perspective.

But how do we embroiderers get non-stitchers to focus on the valuable, positive qualities that needlework fosters - persistence, care, and accuracy - rather than focus on the perceived negatives of the needlework process – repetition and the end-product, which, when a tablecloth, a scarf, or  pot holder,  may be out step with fashion? That is really difficult in an age when “instant” gratification is reinforced by faux self-expression ensconced in fad. Still it is worth trying.

One could argue that persistence, care and accuracy are also stimulated by learning to read music - another form of pattern - and to play an instrument.  Why in today’s world is music more broadly accepted than needlework as a form of self expression and a mark of cultural sensibility?

It may have something to do with the aspect of “hand” in handwork.  East and West seem to agree that modernity is associated with using machines of all sorts whether they sew or print.  Both Chinese and American children are losing handwriting skills as computers march into classrooms, for example. I can understand that. When it comes to writing, give me my computer.

But I intend to do my bit to align the PR image of needlework with the 21^st century technology.  I am going to stop saying I do embroidery.  The next time someone asks me what I am up to these days, I may just say, I’m coding. Well I am, encoding in thread.  A rose by any other name is still a rose.