Capitalism and Traditional Values

Ah, Capitalism! That which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Surely the past month has demonstrated the falsity of that because now capitalism appears to know neither the price NOR the value of anything. I have a friend who was a nun for 25 years but then left the convent, at which point her worldly friends discovered that she was the opposite of old-time capitalism, for she knew the value of everything and the price of nothing. I suppose the job of the rational person is to keep track of both the value AND the price of things.

Quilting is something that, at least when I learned how to do it in the 1940’s, was largely outside the purview of capitalism. It was women’s stuff. For the piecing part, you used old clothes, made patterns with cereal box cardboard, and sewed them by hand. For the quilting part (where you put the three layers together), you might have to buy a commercial batting, but it was also common to use an old worn blanket or flannel sheet for the middle layer. It was an activity that kept you busy, didn’t cost anything, and produced something useful. (There was some commercial development through ‘ladies' magazines’ and newspapers which sold patterns.)

Around the 1970’s, technology changed all that. Rotary cutters, acrylic rulers, quilt historians and books about the history of quilting appeared first, followed by ever-more-evolved sewing machines, specialized cutters, threads, fabrics, and battings. By the 1990’s, the art quilt had spun off from mainstream quilting, which meant that quilters were accumulating dyes and paints and metallic stuffs, while the traditional quilters had an endless array of expensive fabrics specially designed for quilters and even for specific quilt patterns, as well as specialized sewing machines whose prices reached into the thousands. By now, here we are: ‘In 2006, money spent on quilting supplies increased 45.4 percent. That year, quilters spent $3.3 billion in the United States alone. Statistics further show that the average quilter spent just over $2,300 for supplies in 2006.’ And there are now perhaps 25 million quilters in the U.S. alone. And capitalism is just all over those numbers.

Capitalism now requires quilting to keep growing in order to reward the companies/people that have invested in it as a product. But as a growth industry, it has some limits: in particular, fewer and fewer younger people actually know how to sew. They certainly don’t know how to sew by hand, and their abilities on a sewing machine are pretty minimal. They didn’t learn at home, they didn’t learn at school. So it’s a little difficult to figure out exactly how they’re going to take up quilting as a serious hobby.

However, I’m spending the weekend with a brand-new borrowed item: something called a ‘threadless sewing machine.’ It’s also called a felting machine, an embellisher, a needlepunch machine, or just a punching machine. This very simple and portable version of a commercial needlepunch machine is made specifically for quilters on the off chance they haven’t got their $2,300+ spent this year. It looks pretty much like a sewing machine, but it doesn’t have any of the mechanical complexity of a good sewing machine: no tension adjustment, no threading mechanism, no bobbin or bobbin case; just an up and down movement. It has an inverted cup with from 3-12 small barbed needles (each maybe 1-1.5 inches long). The cup moves up and down, and on the down stroke the needles go through two layers of fabric and the barbs cause the fibers of the two fabrics to grab on to one another. The more times you go over a specific area, the stronger the fiber grab is. Works best on wool (because of the way wool fibers entangle), but it works on most fabrics to some extent. This may be it: quilting goes from hand sewing to machine sewing to no sewing. Amazing what you see if you just live long enough.

This is all being sold to quilters as effortless creativity. Not clear whether it’s the quilter or the machine that is being creative. Not clear here who knows the value, but we all know the price.