The Story Of The Sewing Machine

Over 100,000 copies sold 'A tapestry of strong characters and accomplished writing' Herald Scotland It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, in Edinburgh, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than a hundred years after his grandmother’s sewing machine was made, Fred discovers a treasure trove of documents. His family history is laid out before him in a patchwork of unfamiliar handwriting and colourful seams. He starts to unpick the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This book deals with the history of the sewing machine. After almost a century of attempts to invent a machine that would sew, the practical sewing machine evolved in the mid-19th century. In all the preceding centuries of civilization hand sewing was exclusively employed, and it was reserved for the Nineteenth Century to relieve women from the drudgery which for so many centuries had enslaved them. Embroidery machines had been patented in England by Weisenthal in 1755, and Alsop in 1770, and on July 17, 1790, an English patent, No. 1,764, was granted to Thomas Saint for a crude form of sewing machine, having a horizontal arm and vertical needle. In 1826 a patent was granted in the United States to one Lye for a sewing machine, but no records of the same remain, as all were burned in the fire of 1836. In 1830 B. Thimonnier patented a sewing machine in France, 80 of which, made of wood, were in use in 1841 for sewing army clothing, but they were destroyed by a mob, as many other labor-saving inventions had been before. Between 1832 and 1835 Walter Hunt, of New York, made a lock-stitch sewing machine, but abandoned it...