Sewing and Reaping

The American Sewing Guide has a Sewing Hall of Fame. We think that the Dorcas of our text should be a sort of honorary founding member.

There are halls of fame for exemplary participants in all sorts of endeavors these days, so it should be no great surprise that there is a hall of fame for people who sew.

This news of a Sewing Hall of Fame probably has not caused a ripple of excitement to run through you. You're not sitting on pins and needles begging for more. Unless you're a tailor, dressmaker, seamstress or someone who sews as a hobby, the whole topic of sewing may strike you as mundane.

But stick with us for a few moments because this particular hall of fame leads us to a place where even those of us who don't know a needle from a pin can start to get the thread of what we're patching together here.

The Sewing Hall of Fame is the creation of the American Sewing Guild, an organization launched in the late 1970s. By that decade, sewing education had been dropped from many school curriculums, and because more women than ever were working outside the home, they had less time to sew or teach the sewing arts to their...