Sewing With Nancy

Beadwork is a time-honored form of sewing. This art is about more than just the beauty. The raised beadwork has powerful and cultural historic meaning. Please welcome two members of the Oneida Nation, Judy and Betty, and welcome to Sewing with Nancy. Thank you. - Thank you. Good to be here. Oh, it's a pleasure to have you as our guest, and I have the honor of having in my lap some of the most beautiful beadwork I've ever seen, and, Betty, first, starting with you, you have a leather deer hide with some beading on it, and just give our viewers a little history of that. We did our beadwork using old British uniforms, so that's where we get the red velvet from. Or black velvet or blue velvet. Our men caught the deer, so we used tan deer hides, and then we traded the Europeans for the beads. Before that, we used the shell and the stone and berries and stuff like that. Beautiful. And, Judy, you have a eagle-- eagle feather carrier and a pincushion. Right, and the pincushion is a throwback from when the Europeans first came, and I got the pattern through a lot of research with the Royal Ontario Museum in Ontario and in visiting with New York, and we traded patterns for... from the New York Oneidas, so this is a replica of an antique pincushion, and they called them pincushions. And then the eagle feather case. Oh, lovely. - What we started-- what we started doing was making this case, because a lot of the dancers carry eagle feathers with them. Sure. Of course. And this is a way of safeguarding their eagle feathers. Now, Judy, a lot of your-- or, Betty, I'm sorry-- a lot of your patterns have evolved over time. As Betty-- as Judy was saying, excuse me, some of these were 1700, 1800, and this is from a regalia, collars and cuffs, and really, again, very attractive, yes. Oh. - Thank you. Thank you. And here let me show you the belt that goes along with it. Again-- and you have dimension in all your work, as our viewers can see. Tell me about how you achieve the dimension. You take a layer of beads like here, and you put one row down, and then you bead over it, and that will keep the beads raised. It's called Iroquois raised beadwork. It's-- The older work was flat. Like, Judy has some flat work. They're all the same stitches, but it's flatter. So that's how they can distinguish the age. Very nice. And, Judy, you have another belt area, and that really has dimension to it. Yes. Actually, this is a crown. Oh, I'm sorry. - Yeah. That's all right. Yeah, this is a crown, and they were based on the royalty from England and from Germany, and a lot of the women dancers wore the crowns or the headpieces. The other piece that I have here is a sewing kit. So it's just a way of keeping-- Mm-hmm. Keeping your needles and scissors and whatever on hand-- thread. And you also have dolls, and you do the regalia in miniature. Right. Right. And the pattern for the dolls is an old, old pattern that goes back for centuries, and it's called a rip dress, the dress portion of it, it's called a rip dress, because all of the pieces are torn, so they're all either squares or rectangles. Oh, my. - And... and then the other regalia that goes with it, the beadwork. And, Betty and Judy, you have been kind of resurrecting the patterns from the Oneida Nation because many of your ancestors had to leave their craft behind in New York. When we came from New York, we were forced down here, and we were forced to walk or ride on a horse, and all we had was the clothes on our back and maybe enough food for that day, so we had to hunt, and we had to take care of the babies, and we had to gather food all the way down here. When we got down here, we had to reconstruct our houses and start farming and do everything from scratch, so we didn't have time for all of our hobbies. When we finally got around to having enough time, we actually hired a guy from New York that came down and taught us for about 20 years, but he taught us all in these silver aurora borealis. Ah. So then we discovered Rose Mary Hill, and she's the one that brought smaller beads and all the color and just went--

exhales

we all went crazy. And I'm so delighted that you are keeping this art alive. You're passing it on to many generations, and you're sharing it with us, because what beautiful work, and a beautiful part of sewing. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. - Thank you for having us. We really appreciate you watching as well, and I hope you've enjoyed this second program of "Strip-by-Strip Patchwork Quilts." Donna and I have appreciated bringing this to you. Go to NancyZieman.com to watch further Sewing with Nancy programs. Thanks for joining us. Bye for now.