It's strange to me when people dismiss female historical needlework as insignificant or conformist. It's really hard. Excellence in needlework is technical, artistic accomplishment that deserves respect - oh, and clothed huge chunks of ALL populations.
All those MRA tweets about 'what have women invented'? Well, women grew every single human, fed them from their bodies, fed them food after that, and clothed them so that historical men could grow up warm, dry, respectable, in clean clothes with full bellies, to go and invent.
Thoughts inspired by this tweet, and by the continuing trope in screen and text fiction, of ye olde badass girl chucking in her boring needlework for action and adventure - achivement along masculine lines.
I mean, obviously Rozsika Parker's landmark The Subversive Stitch has helped shift thinking about this dymocks.com.au/book/subversiv…
Case in point: Jane Austen. This is an example of Austen's needlework, a satin-stitch monogrammed handkerchief she gave to her sister Cassandra, now in @JaneAustenHouse. Austen 'was considered especially great in satin stitch.' 
And how she was. This is outstanding work. I am a good sewer but satin stitch has always been an Achilles heel. I am in awe of the perfection of this small, insignificant, decorative embroidery. It's hard. It takes huge amounts of practice and skill to look like this.
The thing is, Austen *did the needlework*. She didn't toss her long, flowing chestnut curls and flounce out of the house declaring 'Motherrrrr! Enough with stupid embroidery! I'm off to invent the modern novel!!'
Austen critiques this attitude in Northanger Abbey, when Catherine Norland is so distracted she's not getting her brother's neck linen sewn. Her mum brings her back to earth. She can daydream of boys, and the Gothic, AND get work done.
Jane Austen did the needlework AND invented the modern novel. The two were not only *not* mutually exclusive, I would say they fed each other. All her heroines also sew, even 'feisty' Lizzie Bennet.
Sewing and needlework is space to think, reflect, meditate and daydream, if one is inclined that way. Austen, clearly, was. How much of her work had its genesis in the long hours spent with occupied hands and active mind?
People now spend millions of dollars yearly on mindfulness training, and colouring books that allow absorption into minute, intricate details. Hand sewing provides just that, only doesn't have the label. Focus and not-focus at the same time
And look at the embroidery - it is neat, contained, focused, precise, exact, seemingly simple but hiding its accomplishment in that simplicity. Just like her writing. 'How you do one thing is how you do everything' style of fing.
The handkerchief is also a gift of sisterly love. It demonstrates materialised caring, and reinforcement of emotional bonds in her closest community. It's not dramatic, but it's utterly effective.
Because we have her texts we can rank Austen's needlework as additional to, less than, her written voice. Now extrapolate all the women sewing though history who had no or little written voice.
Their surviving needlework, sewing, knitting, crochet, tatting, repairs, darning, weaving, lacemaking is all that's left of their mind, skill, attention, love, and who knows what world-changing thoughts. It's worked with expertise, and deserves respect.
If you're interested in reading more on women who actively wrote about the mental benefits of needlework, I highly recommend Mary Anne Garry's ‘“After They Went I Worked”: Mrs Larpent and Her Needlework, 1790–1800’, in the journal Costume, 39 (2005), pp. 91–99
