Sword-swinging mercenaries who admire the hell out of their sister-in-law’s delicate, painstaking embroidery. Mages who find their experience with running a household helps them organize and control their magic. Desperate rebels who know they are absolutely dependent on the women who cook and mend and care for the wounded.
I am so bored of heroines who sneer at ‘womanly’ things and complain of the uselessness of embroidery. Your average medieval kingdom wouldn’t last a week without people doing women’s work.
How often is embroidery sneered at?
Surprisingly often. A lot of authors – even otherwise good authors – use embroidery as a textual shorthand for ‘useless & fussy female responsibilities’ in fantasy novels.
Ok to be fair embroidery can be extremely repetitive and tedious, especially if you’re making a large piece of work. And it’s purely decorative, so it doesn’t help anyone stay clothed or anything.
It does, actually! Embroidery along seams, hems, collars, cuffs, etcetera, help reinforce high-wear areas of a garment, lengthening its useful life. Plus it’s a way to subtly conceal small holes or other damage. It could also add value to otherwise cheap clothing – not everyone could buy yards of silks or velvet. Embroidery thread, on the other hand, was much more accessible.
via @lectorel #embroidery was also a skilled craft which people paid for #so it was in fact a potential form of employment
people love looking at embroidery but scoff at the idea someone could do it for work or that its art
i strongly recommend Circle of MAgic by Tamora Pierce – two of the main characters work their magic through embroidery and weaving
In her Tortall books, while none of the POV characters sew, the side characters who do are respected and admired, and it is made abundantly clear how important knowledge of sewing (especially embroidery) is. (There is also a queen who absolutely loves parties and pretty dresses and is considered one of the most beautiful women in the world, who once left a fancy ball to ride out with her personal band of soldiers to rescue some other soldiers, completely ruining her incredibly expensive dress in the process)
I feel like I should point out that if your Typical Fantasy World is based on medieval western Europe, as they usually are, that embroidery was a highly skilled and highly paid craft. Embroidery guilds were quite wealthy and were one of the few guilds where women not only could join in their own right (as opposed to join-through-marriage), but dominated. There’s also the religious element. Church cloths and clerical robes were frequently richly embroidered. It’s devotional as well as decorative.
The moment a society gets past “survival is the only thing on the mind”, people start investing time and resources into art. Sartorial decoration is part of that. Because embroidery is a skilled craft and took time and expensive resources, it’s a fantastic way to show off just how wealthy you were, to have embroidered objects. Especially as certain guilds focused on goldwork embroidery, using a skill and fineness we have no idea how they achieved. It’s pre-industrial and people are hammering gold into sheets finer than foil, cutting them into millimeter wide strips, and then somehow wrapping those “blow on them and they’re floating away” strips of gold around silk threads. All by hand and without breaking the incredibly soft gold.
Embroidery wasn’t just fussy work to while away the hours because you are Oh So Wealthy and don’t have any work, but a seriously skilled craft that people got paid good money for and took an unusually long apprenticeship.
So how does embroidery factor into your fantasy world building? How do artisans affect your world’s economies and religions? Embroidered pieces can also be information disseminating or propaganda. The Bayeux Tapestry isn’t a woven tapestry, it’s embroidered. All two hundred and thirty feet long of it.
Idea: more fantasy heroines who don’t look down on female-coded work
Published
Loki is the Philosopher King 