SUMMARY: This magazine is a treasure trove for crochet and tatting patterns. Knitting is represented, but it's the big loser with only a token knitting pattern here and there. The series of Rastus Cream of Wheat ads dominated the back cover for several years, then moved to the inside front cover, then gave way to Listerine. The Cream of Wheat ads are quite racist by today's standards, but at the time must have been viewed as warmly charming. Lots of sewing and embroidery patterns were advertised in each issue, and it diligently concerned itself with current fashion - for the common housewife looking for ways to be thrifty but not outclassed. They liked to offer premiums - rewards - for collecting subscriptions from friends and relatives, and often had some exhortation on the editor's page on how to go about it. It appears to have worked pretty well as their subscription pool rose to over a million at one point. Some of their premiums were tatting tools. For those who collect tatting shuttles, the illustrations of their premiums would, of course, be invaluable documentation. I also found the small tidbits of advice tatters give in the "What Other Needleworkers Have Found Out" monthly column interesting as the same advice we give to each other today - so not so much has changed in a hundred years...

The long-time editor Margaret Manning/Mrs Stoddard was a madwoman for hyphens. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say you'd be hard-pressed to find a caption that didn't have at least one in it. They began jumping out at me at every turn. I've stripped most of them, and removed words like "the" and "and" and turned "with" into "w/" in order to compress the text. Remember that she had about 9" a page to splash her titling across, where I have about an inch and a half to catalog it in if I want it to stay neat in appearance. I hope this doesn't confuse anyone. I also grouped the patterns under their disciplines(crochet,embroidery,knitting,tatting) in order to make your particular discipline easier to find. With few exceptions, the crochet, knitting and tatting patterns were given in the pages of the issue, and with few exceptions, the embroidery/cutwork and sewing patterns were not. I marked the exceptions with parentheses.

There was a short story in each issue for the early first decade, then that transformed into "fake" short stories that were actually ads for the Women's Institute. I've marked the change and kept cataloging the stories just because I felt like it, and because I still found the Women's Institute stories entertaining. They were all completely gone by the '30's.
Mary Card made her debut in this magazine February 1918 - the war effort was still going strong. The Red Cross was urging women to knit articles for soldiers and refugees, and Herbert Hoover was asking every household to economize their food budget so more food could be sent overseas. Mary E Fitch also has many filet and crochet pieces scattered through the issues, and another filet crochet artist who made me sit up and pay attention is Olive F Ashcroft.

"Needlecraft" also had a long-running series of artices/interviews with various organizations, colleges, clubs and more importantly strong woman role-models in every walk of life that were simply astonishing. If you grew up in the wheat fields of Kansas, would you necessarily know that there were an assortment of women's colleges where you could become anything you wanted to be? The editor also strongly pushed the idea that needlework wasn't just craft, but was a meaningful medium for art. This idea got pushed over and over as a means of empowering women to consider what they did, no matter how humbly, to have worth and value - implying that they too had worth and value. She also ran a series of articles on the needlecraft of various countries and celebrated what immigrants brought to America through traditional arts. It wasn't about cultural appropriation to her, it was about America being the great melting pot and everyone's culture having a place here. Mrs Stoddard is now officially one of my biggest heroes. She did so much to expose women to the advantages of education, to cultural sharing, and the power of kindness all over the world. I am in awe of all she accomplished through her magazine.

The editorial voice in this magazine is one of the strongest I've ever encountered, and when it disappeared from the pages of "Needlecraft", the magazine's swift decline and merciful demise came quickly. I've got a buddy of mine who's a genius trying to find more information on this mystery woman - I spent a fruitless 4-5 hours one day trying to find her and finally gave up and sent a plea and what little information I had to my friend. We'll see if she can work a miracle(again). One of the editor's letters to her readership in 1937 struck me in particular. It was about the deaths of young women from tuberculosis - who were being struck down half again as many as their male counterparts. Mrs Stoddard cited the statistics, rather tartly pointed out the opinion going 'round that they must be dying because of the new short skirts and skimpier clothing, and wanting to work in factories instead of the home - then proceeded to outline the actual reasons young women were dying of tuberculosis as laid out by the Nat. Tuberculosis Assoc. of New York. It reminded me so strongly of the 1980's, when the opinion was going 'round that young gay men were dying more of AIDS than other demographics because it was God's punishment for being gay. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

I was able to do something with this series of magazines I don't normally get to do, and that was to convert all the tatting patterns in the issues I have into PDF files and imbed them in the catalog!!! It took about 20 hours of my life I'll never get back just to go through and add the links to the catalog, but I think it will be well worth it. I wish I could scan and make a PDF file of each issue, but that would probably take up the next five years if I did nothing else. If I ever win the lottery, one of the things on my bucket list is to empty the local librarian's college with internships to digitize all the things that are no longer under copyright. So much of our cultural history is being lost and destroyed as these magazines disappear. I will never forgive the Library of Congress for relegating them to the ash heap of history.