Stitching groups the new book clubs

Jane McNamara (left) and Sue Blackwood discuss the finer points. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Throughout Auckland groups of women are meeting at night in suburban living rooms, community halls, back rooms of shops and occasionally cafes with singleminded purpose: to stitch and sometimes have a bit of a bitch. Martha Stewart would approve.

To call it a third-wave feminism revolt is a bit of a stretch, but there is a growing movement to revive domestic arts.

Most of these groups are led by experts with a genuine love of needlework. They are definitely not mumsy, preferring vintage pinot noir to a cuppa. As one 30-something mother confided: "I feel very mature coming to this group. It's not like drinking in a bar."

Wendy Caldwell's stitch group meets once a month and tonight's meeting is being held at her Mt Albert home.

"We derive a lot of comfort from being together and making things," she says. "But there's never any pressure to perform and everyone brings in whatever they want to do."

On cue, television director Jane McNamara arrives clutching a brown cardigan in need of a stitch in time, and says: "So far, I've just mended clothes because I would never get this done at home."

Corporate lawyer Rachel Lynch, expertly embroidering a baby's singlet, agrees that needlework is best shared with friends. The jury is out on whether a French knot is more tangled than a tort, but Lynch's sister, Anna Burns, is troubled by the one she's using on a pillowslip.

It's heads down as discussions range from matching paint to discipling naughty children - interrupted only by the occasional howl as a needle goes astray. Erudite conversations about the latest prizewinning novel are all very well, but you don't leave a book club with a lasting reminder of your handiwork. "You come away with something precious instead of way too much blue cheese and biscuits before bedtime," Burns says.

Caldwell's quilt is something precious indeed. She's finishing what her mother, Daphne, started more than 20 years ago, but who died before the quilt was completed.

The interior designer is now folding material over the graph paper her mother had carefully cut out in the 80s.