Sewing in the media
Because it’s hilarious what they think we’re like.
I was watching this dodgy English police drama (I am guilty of doing that from time to time) with a weirdly emotional New Zealand copper (female) butting heads with a doggedly dramatic senior Sargent (male, how trite – but wait, it gets worse). There were two (female) homicide victims (one was a cold case, the other more recent); both were sewists and both died wearing the same dress (which they’d made themselves), in the same pattern, made out of the same fabric (it was black checkered plaid if you’re asking). So yes, that irritating feeling of creative ennui can actually kill you.
Pattern to die for: The folly of making your dress in the same fabric as that on the pattern envelope.
Victim number two conveniently left a fabric swatch (to facilitate useless flashbacks helpful police reconstructions later in the episode).
Cue useless flashback dramatic police reconstruction of the crime.
That wasn’t the only sewing – related thing: a couple of times in the series they zoomed in onto the victims’ sewing paraphernelia: one box of envelope patterns (“You fools! This is no homicide, she obviously killed herself in despair! Leave now and let her husband mourn!” I should be more charitable – perhaps she was a pattern drafter, and statistically, there must be people out there sew without hoarding), one sewing machine, one dressmaker’s dummy (non-adjustable and nowhere near the victim’s size WTH?) and a box full of fabric BOLTS (who the hell, that does home sewing, buys their fabric in bolts? Oh wait.. I bought a bolt once, which I since appear to have misplaced; weird considering it was as tall as me and there’s nowhere in my house large enough to hide it..).
The coppers consume greasy deep-fried delights while someone rifles through Victim 2's pattern stash.
So anyway, they showed this flashback of the girl (homicide victim no. 2) unfurling her bolt (like the sails of the bloody Santa Maria) over a professional cutting table which was never shown in the house in succeeding scenes (You fools! she was obviously killed by a home-sewing rival that then stole her cutting table somehow – just look for a sewist with knee damage from too many years of cutting fabric on the floor). And to top it all off, both victims were married (not at the same time) to the same guy (a dental surgeon that ended up being the main suspect). I mean what sort of person, having gone through all of the dramas of stepping on pins, being dragged through fabric sales, lugging home bolts of fabric from ebay sellers’ suburban homes, getting roped into ‘hold this tape for a minute’ not to mention all the loose threads permanently embedded in every carpeted area of his house, once would go through all that shit again with another sewist? “You fools! The man is a masochist not a murderer, he’s obviously addicted to the struggle. Why would he kill his only source of drama/hi-jinks, twice?”
There was a Simplicity pattern.
Unidentified Simplicity pattern (Vintage re-issue?? It looks a lot more interesting than the pattern to die for..). That's the dramatic NZ copper on the right - quite possibly overwhelmed by emotion again...
And a clue, hidden in a secret compartment in the second victim’s sewing room (by which they meant the little drawer in the front of her sewing machine..yeeeesh). The plot (and I use that term loosely) stretched over two hours, over the course of two weeks (which I consumed in one sitting on iview, aah the joys of the internet, self-medication with trashy entertainment at self-prescribed dosage levels) and eventually bumbled its way to some sort of resolution but not before two more deaths (Spoiler: including that of the murderer). The moral of the story? Don’t contribute any checkered plaid to the one cool thing, one strange thing swap.
Seen any (mis)representations of sewing/ craft in the media lately? Let me know and I’ll dissect them/ link your dissection thereof, here.
The Perfect Nose 