Why not sew much in film?

Coco Avant Chanel was a film I longed to see because I thought it would be full of the early years of Coco hand stitching away, putting new things together for the first time, creating those suits, those jackets…  But it was such a disappointment.  There was just one scene of Coco repairing something.  She rolled out a wonderful cloth sewing kit and threaded up, but that was about it. 

I can’t really articulate why I want to see stitching in films.  Perhaps it has to do with possibilities, or watching skill on screen.  Perhaps it’s the same reason some people enjoy seeing painting happening in movies.

Joan Didion has written that when she looks at her ancestral quilts from covered wagon days, she can see that the women had stitched through their pain – the cold, the babies that must’ve died along the way, the homelessness…  I’m not sure we can ever expect to have that quite captured in film but I know it can be an intense, concentrated moment in time.

I think I watch Dial M for Murder time and time again just for the scene where we see Grace Kelly’s mending basket in its blue satin glory. Oh, but also for that little red handbag (I will write a post on Hitchcock and handbags another time - there's too much to say).

There’s narrative in stitching and stitching in narrative.  I’m doing lots of hand sewn toys in front of the telly this Christmas, like every other.  So often the little toys I’m making are infused with what I’ve been watching, so when I look at them I see film or tv.  A navy blue cat has been doused in Luther season 2.  A sweet brown horse has elements of Dexter, a black swan – Sex and the City (again). 

I digress.  The magic of the screen has in fact given me the confidence that I can really produce some clothes. Project Runway (Season 8) was the best reality show I’ve seen since Fashion House (where we witnessed the rise of Gareth Pugh).  Project Runway was bitchy, funny but most of all it showed SEWING.