Embroidery Under Fire

With male family members at the battlefront, wounded, or killed, French peasant women used their needlework skills to maintain their livelihoods and rebuild their war-torn communities. Thousands of American women volunteers in France, especially those associated with the American Committee for a Devastated France, sponsored them.

Household items they embroidered were sold in America through the Society for Employment of Women, a war relief organization in France. All the proceeds went back to the women and their families. Living and working close to the front, often they took shelter in cellars and underground quarries during shelling of their villages.

Brush and comb case depicting airplanes guarding Paris.
Lent by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History