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Sewing and Learning Workshop

Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Politics of Pocket Purses

January 15, 2022

 

Employed to compensate for restrictive fashions and to address a range of social and cultural needs, pockets and small bags are a microcosm of complex political, gender, and race history.

 

 

In this virtual sewing circle, participants will sew and decorate a replica of a reticule, a kind of pocket purse, while also taking part in learning and conversation, as was common practice in nineteenth-century sewing circles.

 

 

The Stowe Center is pleased to welcome three guest experts to this event, including Dr. Shirley Wajda, scholar of protest fashion and Director of The Enfield Shaker Museum, Edjohnetta Miller, internationally-recognized quilt artist, and Rebecca Bayreuther Donohue, historic clothing consultant and designer of the pocket purse pattern used in this program.

 

 

The pattern and other materials will be mailed in advance and all will be encouraged to enhance the project with their personal artistry. Participants can share their creation as a friendship gift, or donate it to an activist cause about which they are passionate as part of a broader movement of “craftivism” (creating and making crafts as a form of advocacy and/or resistance).

 

Registration is required. Pricing is flexible.

 

Location Virtual
Doors Open 3:00 PM
Program 3:00-5:00 pm