Men and Fabric Arts: A Match Made In… The Closet?

I just don’t understand why men don’t generally do things like knit and quilt. I mean, some do, but the general rule is that fabric arts are shunned as if they are something to be afraid of. I don’t get it.

Actually, I do get it. I understand. It’s avoided because if more than 3 women do something- especially if they do it together… while they are talking- we men are afraid that it might just be the one thing that magically turns us gay. Or worse, we don’t even think about it. We just assume that there are things that men do, and things that women do.

Quilting, knitting. These are things that women do.

When I was about 7, my father was sewing curtains. He did many things like that, sewing, all the cooking, music. He was creative without the boundaries that I was used to elsewhere. Like all of us, I was acculturated to have that whole “Boys here and girls there” attitude in school and elsewhere. One day, he was sewing curtains (from bare fabric… on a machine… with a pattern!). I asked him why he was doing women’s work. His response came without even a turn of the head (in his normally harsh way at times):

“Don’t be so stupid! If you want to limit yourself by doing only what other people tell you that you can and cannot do, that’s up to you. Me, I’m going to do what I like to do, and damned if anyone is going to tell me that I’m not allowed to.”

Now, seriously, I was 7. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. What do you mean “allowed?” That thought never even crossed my mind. I didn’t say this, of course. I’d learned by then to just keep my mouth shut and assume I didn’t have the whole picture whenever dad said anything cryptic. I was 7, though. My mind still begged to argue: “I didn’t say you weren’t allowed, you’re just not supposed to.”

Years passed before I realized how wise a man my father was. I don’t know when that moment came when I finally understood what he’d said. Like many things, it probably wasn’t a moment, actually. It was more like a time when you look back and realize that you’d been thinking a certain way for a certain time.

At some point between age 7 and now, I gained an appreciation for trying to do all kinds of things, including those traditionally in the realm of women. Quilting is one of those things. It’s a great creative expression, you end up with cool art, or better yet, blankets. And hey, if you’re still worried about that whole “turning gay” thing, don’t be- the women dig it!

Here’s a quilt I made when Jessie got her job in Hood River. She only had a tiny little window, so I thought it would be fun to make a quilt of a window scene so she could look outside. Most of it is pieced (sewn together) but the tree and the sails are appliqué (sewn on top). You can’t tell from the photo, but the actual quilting pattern is pretty neat. There are flowers quilted into the ground, stars and clouds quilted into the sky, and waves quilted into the water. The fault is a joke for Jessie, because we met in a geology program.

Two really funny things about this. The first is that this is supposed to be the Columbia River at White Salmon, and the sun rises in neither the north or the south. I pretend that I meant for her to be looking east at the hills near The Dalles, but we both know I just wasn’t thinking clearly when I made it.

Another funny thing is that we’d just moved to Hood River when I made this, and you could tell because there’s not one single kite on the water. If I’d made this today, it’d probably be mostly kites, and maybe a barge too.

One last thing about men and fiber arts. Some of the men reading this blog will probably be upset about my making a straw men of them. Even more will probably think something along the lines of “I never thought men shouldn’t quilt, why chastise me?” This is not a contradiction of the rule, but rather a reflection of the demographics of my readers.  Most of whom live in the Pacific Northwest at this point.

There’s a lot of difference between the people in the PNW and elsewhere in the country, and one of those differences is their more general lack of dedication to typical gender-based stereotypes. That’s not to say that they don’t exist here, of course. Nor is it to say that, to certain people, they may not feel pretty damn oppressive. It is to say that the concentration of acceptance is significantly higher. In the PNW, I’m actually likely to offend some men by making bold statements about why they don’t quilt.

In many places in the Southeast, and even some in the Northeast, I’d be lucky to get out of the room alive by suggesting that they could.

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