Women's Work

It was a sleepy afternoon and the shops in the tiny french village were all closed. The window of the antiques shop was a thing of beauty, a lovingly laid out tableau of antique sewing tools. My friend and I studied the bits of lace, booklets with embroidery designs, wooden spools, metal rollers and stamps meant for marking family initials, and the ink to use with them. They are tools that were an essential part of a woman's life when things were handmade, reused, darned and repaired.