Several months ago I did a lecture at my local magic club called Things To Make And Do. I mentioned it in an earlier post.
There’s a little anecdote in that I told in that lecture which I want to share now.
I’ve been something of a shut-in since COVID¹ so I don’t get down to The Magic Circle like I used to back in the twentyteens². However I still enjoy attending the live streams, and its always slightly annoying when an awesome sounding lecture or workshop is restricted to physical attendees only. There was a lecture about using 3D printing in magic which at the last minute was announced to be theatre only, so with about 20 people on Zoom and no lecture to watch, myself and Gordon Drayson talked about our 3D printing for the next 90 minutes. It was fun, Gordon and I used 3D printing in different ways, we had different printers, and people really engaged with it. Afterwards several people said they all wanted a 3D printer, and three of them literally ordrred one while we were still on the zoom call.
Wholesome times were had by all.
Back in the before times, the long long ago, like maybe 2019 (I can’t remember the exact year) Lynetta Welch gave a lecture at Blackpool Magic Convention about the creation of fabric magic props. She had a set of notes I bought at the end, and talked about how she had gotten into making egg bags, devil’s hanks, change bags, and many other sewn props. It inspired me to develop my own design of a forcing bag for my lego trick which was in the Things To Make And Do lecture, from which this anecdote is taken. Yes we’re still in the anecdote.
The Lynetta lecture, Fabric manipulation, was attended by ten times as many people as the 3D printing talk, and not one person in earshot of me mentioned even thinking about buying a sewing machine.
Thats the end of the anecdote.
I have three leading hypotheses for why this might be.
1. Lack of imagination
The reason I got a 3D printer was to design new props and mechanisms and be able to physically handle the prototypes and try them out. Most of what Gordon talked about was the absolute wealth of existing designs which you can download and print with zero knowledge of design or cad or software or anything. So you don’t really have to know what you’re doing in order to do 3D printing, especially of you buy a self calibrating all mod cons plug and play printer.
Sewing machines on the other hand, whilst still just fine if you want to design your own cloth props, don’t have a huge library of magic gimmicks in pattern form. The main ones people can think of (egg bags, devil’s hanks, change bags) they can just buy. So why bother?
Speaking of “why bother…”
2. Laziness
But you don’t have to be an inventor to put your own spin on something. Sure you might just want to make your own devils hank or ring vanishing silk but if you make your own you can pick the fabric, the colours, the pattern, the size, you can even embroider a monogram or other design. That has to count for something. The difference is that if you want to personalise a 3D printed prop you can just add your name or logo in the software and pick a colour from any number of filaments. And then you just set it going.
There is no “just set the sewing machine going”. To even produce a basic pattern you need to transfer it to the fabric, cut the pieces, pin them together and feed them through the machine manually, in the right order, with the right seam allowances. You have to press the seams, cut off excess thread and in the case of an egg bag, turn it inside out 4 times. Sometimes you need to hand sew the last bit after turning it right side out, or add draw strings, buttons, zips, velcro, snaps, all manual tasks that not only need to be done by hand but get them wrong and it could ruin the piece. A 3D printer is basocally Bertha by comparison³.
Not that it is particularly difficult, I mean there’s a learning curve to it but there are enormous sweatshops overseas packed full of so-called “unskilled workers” turning out garments for pennies an hour. Indeed for many years virtually every one would have to know how to sew, either by machine or by hand in order to have the clothes needed for everyday use.
Oh wait did I say everyone? I meant-
3 Misogyny
All the skirts I wear, and I mean all of them, were made by my mother⁴. In modern times this is absolutely insane to most people, but in the past most people owned clothing which was either made, altered or repaired by their women in the house. Mothers taught daughters to sew as a marketable skill in obtaining a husband who couldn’t afford to go to a tailor. Men of course were busy working, so sewing became part of the housework along with cooking, cleaning and squeezing out infants.
As such that room, mostly full of men, weren’t about to learn a feminine skill. The women probably either already owned a sewing machine⁵ or had long since decided that learning to sew was submitting to patriarchal expectations, and they would rather learn card tricks⁶.
In conclusion
Lynetta’s lecture was probably extremely good for her. She got to lecture a room full of people in a skill they would never use and then sell them all the props she just told them she made. Normally the worst part of a lecture is having to sell things afterwards to people who mostly only buy things to find out how they work, when you’ve already told them. I do wonder if maybe I could have spent the weeks leading up to my lecture just sewing together some props to sell instead of writing notes, but the entire point of the lecture was to get people making things.
I do wonder exactly how bad this has become, and I lack the reach to properly survey a wide range of performers but I suspect its even worse than I fear⁷.
For whatever reason I think the world of magic is in a pretty poor state if people aren’t even sewing their own matchstick into the hem of a handkerchief.
¹ I know it’s been 6 years but I have other health problems and the hermit lifestyle quite suits me.
² Did we ever come up with a better term for that decade? Its getting a bit late now to come up with something new.
³ Bertha, for those of you who failed to understand a very niche an chronologically narrow reference, was a children’s stop-motion animated show about people working in the factory that housed Bertha, a machine into which you could feed any plan or design and it would just spit out the finished item, fully assembled.
⁴ All my other clothes are off the peg but getting a skirt with decent sized pockets is impossible, particularly for someone as heavy as me. When women go above a certain weight society expects us to just cover ourselves with a sheet and go hide in the shadows. In fact a number of other physical conditions can limit available clothing, such as being too tall or buxom. Clothing sizes only seemed to catch onto the idea that women could be different shapes about 20 years ago, and even since then the options are just apple, pear, hourglass and skinny. I dont think I own a single purchased article of clothing which isnt stretchy.
⁵ Like me, because sometimes my hand made bespoke skirts need repairs. Sooner or later I’m going to have to up my skill levels to make new ones from scratch because eventually my mother is going to get fed up of the requests. Fortunately my resolve to end my bloodline means I will never have to sew for my own children. Maybe I could make a cute costume for the dog.
⁶ The rejection of stereotypically feminine cultural artifacts by men is misogyny. The rejection of stereotypically feminine cultural artifacts by women is internalised misogyny, and we should all be wary of it. Watch Purl. Purl used to be on the official Pixar YouTube channel but now its been hoovered o to Disney+ as part of their need to fence off as much content as possible with the aim of driving up subscription. Hilariously the Pixar website still offers a link to the now removed official YouTube video. That said, I don’t expect you to sign up for a streaming subscription service to watch an 8 minute cartoon. I’m sure it is not beyond the wits of my readers to locate an unofficial source.
⁷ I swear to god if I have to hear one more guy say he asked his wife to sew a topit into his jacket…