{"id":529,"date":"2024-09-16T13:10:20","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T11:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bcdss-recette.mazedia.fr\/nadelgeld\/"},"modified":"2024-10-21T15:15:21","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T13:15:21","slug":"nadelgeld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/nadelgeld\/","title":{"rendered":"Pin Money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Meguey Baker
BCDSS Conference Lecturer<\/h4>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A woman in the American post-World War II economy using her sewing skills to have some measure of financial freedom. Sometimes this was the only income of the household, but it still was considered \u201cpin money,\u201d less valid or important; other times, it was the main way a woman could fulfill the restrictive gender roles of the 1950s and still have a bit of economic independence<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a story about my grandmother, and millions like her, who took up sewing and mending as a way to make extra money. Growing up, the clearest earliest memory I have of my grandmother Mille McKie is from her back as she sat at this sewing desk. I would sit on the couch across the room, or play nearby, and she would be sewing. Always sewing. With windows to let in light, and shelves and drawers of buttons and fabric and patterns, and a client\u2019s dress or shirt or pants on hangers on the back of the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 1: Sewing table belonging to my maternal grandmother Mildred Nelson McKie. This is a 1920s desk that was customized by my grandfather Albert McKie to accommodate her sewing machine nested into the top. The 1900 Singer sewing machine currently resting on top belonged to my paternal great-grandmother Wilhelmina Meisterknecht Withun. Grandmother Wilhelmina went blind in her late 60s and died a decade before I was born, but I have always felt a connection to her through her textile work and this machine, which I inherited when I was 18 (photo: M. Baker, 2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My grandmother was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, and in the 1929 US stock market crash that launched the Great Depression, her family \u201cwent to bed with the farm and woke up without it.<\/em>\u201d They lost everything. This had a profound effect on my grandmother, who was born in 1920. As a young wife and mother in 1950, she started sewing for her children, as almost all women did. The family lived above her in-laws\u2019 general store, where her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother Menoa Baum McKie, occasionally took in mending. This falls into the centuries-long realm of \u201cpin money\u201d<\/em> \u2013 money made by women from some home-based occupation to get some financial independence. Sewing was very common, along with any other kind of textile work, from washing and laundering to mending and making custom garments. My mother recalls her mother\u2019s friends also raising chickens to sell eggs, or caning chairs, or making jam; anything to stretch the family budget and have money separate from the husband, who was understood to be the \u201cofficial\u201d breadwinner. Until the 1970s, married American women were not allowed to have a savings account separate from their husbands, so this sort of off-the-books, under-the-counter work was their main recourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a way for my grandmother to buy the fabric to make her own clothes and clothes for her children, but also to help pay off the family tab at the local store, and to buy gas for the family car. She was contributing meaningfully to the family budget. And my grandfather was fully in support of her sewing work. He made her a custom sewing case to her specifications, and she had her own tools to care for her sewing machines (plural) as the years went on. It\u2019s easy to think of sewing as a \u201csoft\u201d practice, with maybe needles and pins and scissors, but this drawer, with the same exact tools that my grandfather used to repair the lawnmower or the furnace or the washer, says otherwise: sewing with a machine means learning how to maintain that machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 2: Sewing cabinet made by my grandfather Albert McKie to hold tools my grandmother Millie needed close at hand. When I left for college, he made me one just like it. I now have them both and use them regularly (photo: M. Baker, 2024)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 3: My grandmother\u2019s tools for maintenance on her sewing machine. Other drawers held scissors, pins, seam rippers, elastic, buttons, etc. These drawers were like magic portals to a world of creativity when I was a child. The curving side compartments opened up and held her most commonly used patterns, for her own shirts and dresses, my grandfather\u2019s shirts, and her go-to patterns for her most regular customers (photo: M. Baker, 2024).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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My grandmother was largely a traditionalist, believing in her role as wife and mother as the main portion of her life, but she also pushed against that dominant messaging in her sewing work. She took in mending and basic alterations to start, but my mother recalls wearing beautifully tailored plaid wool jacket and skirt sets that \u201cwould have cost a fortune\u201d if her mother had not made them. In the 1960s and 1970s, when my mother and her younger siblings were in school, the cost of fabric was still significantly less than the cost of finished garments, unlike today, when the inverse is largely true. And when I was a child in the 1970s and 1980s, my grandmother was sought after as a skilled tailor for formal wear as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was 6 years old, my grandmother sat me on her lap at this sewing desk and taught me how to use her machine. She operated the foot pedal so she could control the speed and keep my little fingers safe, but I was the one guiding the fabric under the flashing needle. I thought it was magic. I made a little lined pouch with a folded flap and a shoulder strap out of ribbon. At the time, I thought it was just a rare moment when Grandma had time to \u201cplay\u201d with me, but as I have sewn my entire life since, I now see it for what it was: passing on a skill that would allow me to be self-sufficient, no matter what. My grandmother died in 2022. There was no question as to which grandchild would inherit her sewing table and cabinet, and they are among my most treasured possessions. I am deeply grateful for the legacy of cloth, needles, and thread in my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Further Reading<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Edwards, Laura F., 2022. Only the Clothes On Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Textile Research Center, 2017.
https:\/\/www.trc-leiden.nl\/trc-needles\/oster carpet\/texts-films-customs-and-events\/customs-and-traditions\/pin-money<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meguey BakerBCDSS Conference Lecturer A woman in the American post-World War II economy using her sewing skills to have some measure of financial freedom. Sometimes this was the only income of the household, but it still was considered \u201cpin money,\u201d less valid or important; other times, it was the main way a woman could fulfill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"themenfeld":[48,45],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-en","themenfeld-actors","themenfeld-spindle-loom-needle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2470,"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/2470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"themenfeld","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/themenfeld?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}