96 Fun Facts About Sewing

A bird-bone needle found in Denisova Cave, attributed to Denisovans, is estimated to be roughly how old?

50,000 years is the estimate for the needle, dug up in Siberia's Denisova Cave in 2016 and hailed as the oldest known, though a possible needle point from a South African cave may be 10,000 years older.

The Inuit traditionally made sewing thread from the sinew of which animal?

Inuit seamstresses twisted caribou sinew, especially the long back sinew, into thread for fur and skin clothing, sewing it with needles carved from bone.

Which English inventor produced the first sewing machine design, in 1790?

Thomas Saint's 1790 British patent described a machine for leather and canvas; when William Newton Wilson built it from the drawings in 1874, it needed modifications before it would sew.

What happened in 1831 at the Paris workshop where Barthelemy Thimonnier's sewing machines made army uniforms?

Angry tailors stormed it, some 150 or more of them, afraid the machines would take their work; they wrecked dozens, and in some tellings burned the place down.

Which inventor of the safety pin also built America's first lockstitch sewing machine in the 1830s?

Walter Hunt is said to have held back from patenting the machine for fear it would throw seamstresses out of work; by the time he sought a patent in the 1850s, Elias Howe already held the lockstitch one.

Elias Howe's 1846 lockstitch patent placed the needle's eye where?

At the point: the needle carries a loop of thread down through the cloth for a shuttle underneath to catch; family legend traces the idea to a dream of warriors whose spears were pierced near the tip.

What is the tightly woven edge along each side of a length of fabric, which stops the cloth unravelling, called?

The selvage is a worn-down 'self-edge': the crosswise thread turns back at each side of the loom, so the cloth finishes its own edge and needs no hem there.

Singer and partner Edward Clark pioneered which way of selling sewing machines to ordinary households?

Hire-purchase instalment plans were Clark's answer to a machine that cost over $100, far beyond most households: from 1856 a family could take one home and pay it off in small sums.

What are the toothed metal bars under a sewing machine's needle, which grip the fabric and move it along, called?

Feed dogs rise, push the cloth back one stitch length, drop and return; Allen B. Wilson patented this four-motion feed in 1854, and rival makers had little choice but to adopt it.

Who is said to have sewn the first American flag?

Betsy Ross was a Philadelphia upholsterer, and the tale rests on her family's word: her grandson first told it in public in 1870, nearly a century on, and no record from the time backs it up.

Which small spool supplies a sewing machine's lower thread?

A bobbin holds the lower thread, which the machine interlocks with the needle thread at every stitch; that locking together of two threads is what gives the lockstitch its name.

What is the main drawback of a chain stitch?

It unravels entirely if the thread breaks or a loose end is pulled, which is why sewing machines moved on to the lockstitch, and why feed sacks still use it: one tug opens the bag.

Which machine trims a fabric edge with a blade and wraps it in thread as it sews?

A serger, as overlock machines with cutters are called in North America, trims and binds the raw edge in a single pass, so a seam is sewn and neatly finished at once.

Why were electric sewing machines slow to spread?

Homes lacked electricity when Singer brought out its first electric machines; the early ones were ordinary models with a motor strapped to the side, and they caught on only as houses were wired.

Ebenezer Butterick, who began selling graded tissue-paper patterns in 1863, worked as what?

A bespoke tailor by trade, Butterick knew how to cut a pattern to fit one customer; the leap, reportedly prompted by his wife Ellen's frustration with one-size patterns, was to grade each design in a range of sizes.

Which magazine did the Butterick company publish to promote its sewing patterns?

The Delineator began as a way to sell Butterick's paper patterns by mail and outgrew the job: under editors such as the novelist Theodore Dreiser it ran fiction and campaigning articles alongside the fashions.

Which sewing tool was voted out of Monopoly in 2017 and back in 2022?

The thimble lost its place in 2017 along with the boot and the wheelbarrow, making way for a T. rex, a penguin and a rubber duck; five years later a fan vote brought it back and sent the T. rex packing.

In Britain, what is a shop that sells buttons, ribbons, pins and thread called?

A haberdashery sells sewing supplies in Britain, but in America the word means a men's outfitter: Harry Truman ran one in Kansas City, selling men's clothing, before he went into politics.

In hand-sewing needle sizes, how does a size 12 needle compare with a size 9?

It is shorter and finer: hand-needle sizes run backwards, by the same logic as wire gauges, so the bigger the number, the daintier the needle.

The classic stuffed pincushion sold with sewing kits is shaped like which fruit, often with a small strawberry attached?

A tomato is the usual shape, and its dangling strawberry is a tool, not a decoration: it is packed with emery powder, an abrasive that cleans and sharpens pins pushed through it.

Which type of hand-sewing needle is traditionally used for quilting?

Betweens, also sold as quilting needles, are shorter than everyday sharps, the better to make fine, close stitches through thick layers; tailors use them for the same reason.

Whitcomb Judson's 1893 zipper ancestor, first meant for boots, was called what?

The clasp locker made its debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and met with little commercial success; it took Gideon Sundback's later redesign to turn the idea into the modern zipper.

Which company coined the word 'zipper' in the 1920s for its rubber overshoes with slide fasteners?

B.F. Goodrich meant Zipper as the name of the boots and registered it as a trademark, but the public applied the word to the fastener itself, and it passed into the language as a common noun.

Which sides carry buttons on traditional shirts?

Men right, women left is the convention; one popular but unproven story is that wealthy women were dressed by maids, so their buttons were set to suit the person facing them.

Swiss engineer George de Mestral was inspired to invent Velcro by what?

Burdock burrs stuck to his dog and his own clothes after a hunting trip in the Alps in 1941; under a microscope he saw hundreds of tiny hooks, and he spent years turning the idea into a fastener.

Which two French words combine to make the name Velcro?

Velours and crochet mean velvet and hook, a plain description of the fastener's two faces: one strip of soft pile, the other of tiny hooks that catch in it.

What is the padded middle layer of a quilt called?

Batting, called wadding in Britain, is what makes a quilt warm, and the lines of quilting stitches are there to hold it in place between the two layers of cloth.

Which museum displays part of the Tristan Quilt, one of the earliest quilts known, sewn in medieval Sicily?

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London shows one section and the Bargello in Florence another; the pair were long thought a Florentine wedding gift of 1395, though later research points to an earlier date.

Despite its name, the 70-metre Bayeux Tapestry was actually made by which technique?

The Bayeux Tapestry is embroidery: coloured yarns stitched onto linen cloth rather than woven on a loom, probably made in the 1070s, within a decade of the 1066 battle.

Which clothing fastener was patented by Heribert Bauer in 1885?

The snap fastener, a ball that clicks into a sprung socket, was patented by Heribert Bauer of Pforzheim to fasten men's trousers; the version that caught on was Hans Prym's improved design, which went on sale in 1903.

Crewelwork is decorative stitching done with what kind of yarn?

Wool is the whole point: 'crewel' is the name of the loosely twisted worsted yarn itself, so the craft is defined by its thread rather than by any particular stitch or pattern.

In a French seam, what happens to the raw edges of the fabric?

They are fully enclosed: the seam is sewn once with wrong sides together, trimmed, then turned and sewn again with right sides together, trapping the raw edges inside for a neat finish.

Where on a garment is a true flat-felled seam most often found?

The inseam and yoke of jeans get a true flat-felled seam, sewn on a double-needle machine: the raw edges are turned under and stitched down flat, so nothing is left loose to fray.

What does the zigzag edge cut by pinking shears achieve?

It limits how far the fabric frays, because a thread can only unravel as far as the nearest notch; Louise Austin patented a pinking-shears design in 1893.

Fabric cut on the 'true bias' runs at what angle to the warp and weft?

The true bias runs at 45 degrees to the warp and weft; cut that way, woven cloth stretches and drapes far more fluidly, which is why bias-cut gowns cling and flow.

Which French couturiere is credited with popularising the bias cut in the 1930s?

Madeleine Vionnet worked out her bias-cut gowns by draping and pinning cloth on a miniature mannequin before making them up full size, and the dresses that resulted clung to the body and moved with it.

The word 'denim' is a contraction of a French phrase meaning serge from which city?

Denim comes from 'serge de Nimes', after the textile town in southern France; in classic indigo denim only the warp threads are dyed, which is why the inside of jeans is pale.

Which Reno tailor devised riveted work trousers, then patented them with Levi Strauss in 1873?

Jacob Davis, a Riga-born tailor, hit on copper rivets for a customer's work trousers but lacked the money to patent the idea, so he offered a share to Levi Strauss, the merchant who sold him his cloth.

On which London street is Henry Poole credited with creating the dinner jacket?

Savile Row's Henry Poole & Co, often called the street's founders, cut a short smoking jacket for the Prince of Wales in the 1860s that became the dinner jacket; a century later the Beatles put Apple Corps at number 3.

Which two judges presided over the first series of The Great British Sewing Bee in 2013?

Patrick Grant and May Martin judged series 1 to 3 from 2013; Esme Young replaced Martin in series 4, and Claudia Winkleman presented the first four series.

Which of these is one of the rounds on The Great British Sewing Bee?

The Transformation Challenge hands sewers second-hand garments or odd fabrics to reinvent as something else against the clock; in the show's earlier series the round was called the Alteration Challenge.

Project Runway premiered in December 2004 on which network?

Bravo launched the show in December 2004 and lost it after five seasons: the producers sold it to Lifetime, Bravo's owner NBCUniversal sued, and the move went ahead in 2009 only after a settlement.

What are the test garments sewn before cutting into the final fabric commonly called?

Muslins or toiles are named for the cheap cloth they are sewn from, muslin in America and 'toile', a French word for linen cloth or canvas, in Britain, so the fit can be corrected before costly fabric is cut.

A tailor's ham and a seam roll are pressing aids used for what?

Shaping a garment means pressing its curves over a curve: darts, sleeves and collars are ironed on the firmly stuffed ham or roll, so the cloth keeps the contours of the body.

Which simple hand stitch let traditional Japanese kimonos be unpicked and taken apart for washing?

Running stitches held a kimono together loosely enough to be unpicked for washing and sewn up again by hand afterwards; the tight lockstitch of home sewing machines helped push Japan toward Western dress.

What 19th-century clamp-on gadget, a popular gift for seamstresses, served as a 'third hand'?

A sewing bird clamped to the table edge and gripped the cloth in its spring-loaded beak, holding the fabric taut as a 'third hand'; Charles Waterman patented a popular design in 1853.

Which small forked sewing tool, named in a patent as early as 1898, cuts and removes unwanted stitches?

Seam ripper blades sit at the base of a little fork, so the thread slides down and is sliced as the tool is lifted. Many sewers also use one to cut buttonholes open.

Which sewing machine part holds the fabric flat during stitching and must be lowered before the fabric will move?

Presser foot pressure stops the cloth rising and falling with the needle and puckering. Special versions exist for zippers, buttonholes, blind hems and darning.

Which cartoon character made his debut in 1929, during the tenth year of the comic strip Thimble Theatre?

Popeye walked on as a sailor hired at the docks to crew a ship and quickly became the lead. By 1931 the strip had been renamed Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye.

A darning egg or darning mushroom is slipped inside which item of clothing to hold it in shape for mending?

A sock is stretched over the tool's rounded top so the hole sits on a firm base for repair. Tiger cowries, popular as ornaments, were sometimes pressed into service instead.

Which torso-shaped fitting model, nicknamed a Judy or a James in the trade, lets sewers check a garment's drape?

Dress form torsos come in standard sizes for pattern making, while adjustable ones can be set to one person's measurements. A Judy is the female version and a James the male.

Which bladed tool, introduced by Japan's Olfa in 1979, lets quilters slice several layers of fabric at once?

Rotary cutter blades are circular and can be resharpened, and Olfa first aimed the tool at garment makers. Quilters adopted it almost at once, ending the chore of drawing round cardboard templates one piece at a time.

Which sewing machine part raises and lowers the needle manually and should always be turned towards the sewer?

Handwheel turns move the needle a little at a time, and turning the wrong way can tangle the threads. On many machines it also pulls out to stop the needle moving while thread is wound.

A sewing machine's stitch width dial sets the sideways swing of the needle for which stitch, used on stretch fabrics?

Zigzag sewing needs a needle bar that swings from side to side, hardware most machines did not have before the mid-1950s. Helen Blanchard is said to have patented the first machine of the kind back in 1873.

In J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, what does Peter believe he has been given when Wendy hands him a thimble?

A kiss is what Peter takes the thimble to be, and he gives Wendy an acorn in return. Worn round her neck, the acorn later saves her when a Lost Boy shoots at her.

Which toothed tool is rolled along a sewing pattern to transfer darts, pleats and buttonholes onto the fabric?

Tracing wheel teeth press a dotted line through the paper, with or without tracing paper against the cloth. A double version marks the cutting line and the stitching line in one pass.

Which Finnish company picked orange for its famous scissor handles after an internal vote on prototype colours?

Fiskars made prototypes with black, red, green and orange handles in 1967. Orange won, and Fiskars Orange later became a registered trademark in Finland and the United States.

Tailor's chalk, used to make temporary marks on cloth, is now usually made from which soft mineral?

Talc, or magnesium silicate, has replaced the hard chalk that tailors once used. The sticks still go by the old name even though the mineral inside has changed.

Which Scottish economist used the making of pins to explain the division of labour in his most famous book?

Adam Smith described ten workers splitting the job into about eighteen separate operations. Together, he wrote, they could turn out upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day.

A heavy pressing iron used by tailors is named after which long-necked creature, for the shape of its handle?

Goose is the tailor's word for a smoothing iron with a gooseneck handle. Unlike the farmyard kind, two of them are gooses, never geese.

Which short metal ruler, typically six inches long, has a sliding pointer for marking hems and buttonholes?

Sewing gauge sliders hold one measurement so that it can be repeated all the way round a hem. Anchor the slider with a pin and the ruler even works as a compass for drawing circles.

Dressmakers' tape measures, once cloth or plastic, are now usually made of which material that resists stretching?

Fiberglass resists the stretching and tearing that spoil a cloth tape. Before marked tapes existed, tailors recorded each client's size by putting notches in a plain strip of cloth.

Which African American dressmaker patented a narrow, reversible ironing board designed for pressing sleeves?

Sarah Boone, born into slavery in North Carolina, made her board slim enough to slip inside a sleeve so both sides could be pressed. She worked as a dressmaker in New Haven, Connecticut.

Which decorative belt hook, named after the mistress of a castle, held scissors and other tools on chains?

Chatelaine first meant the lady of a château, who wore her keys at her belt. By the late 1820s fashion magazines were using the word for the ornament itself, hung with watches, keys and smelling salts.

The 'sad' in sad iron, the heavy flatiron once heated on a stove, comes from a Middle English word meaning what?

Solid is what sad once meant, and the name suited irons whose base was a single thick slab of metal. Such irons came into use from the 17th century.

Which word for small sewing supplies such as buttons and elastic follows 'Yankee' in an old phrase for American goods?

Notions is almost always used in the plural, and fabric shops give them a department of their own. Even a single spool of thread counts as a notion.

Metal pans filled with hot coals were used to smooth fabrics more than two thousand years ago in which country?

China had these pan irons by the 1st century BC. The electric iron had to wait until 1882, when the American Henry W. Seely patented one.

Which woman's ornamental case, usually carried in a pocket or purse, held sewing needles and other small tools?

Étui cases held folding scissors, a needlecase, tweezers and hairpins, and some carried doctors' lancets. Fabergé built one of his jewelled eggs, the Necessaire Egg, as one.

A pocket-size case for thread and other sewing bits, pronounced 'huzzif', is spelled like which everyday word?

Housewife in this sense is a pocket-size container for small articles such as thread. The clipped pronunciation belongs mainly to the sewing kit, not to the homemaker.

A tailor's ham, a hard pressing cushion named for its shape, is tightly stuffed with scrap fabric or which filling?

Sawdust gives the tightly stuffed cushion its firmness, inside a cover of heavy cloth such as cotton canvas. Dressmakers use the same pillow under the name dressmaker's ham.

Tubular bronze needlecases, made to hang from a belt, are common finds at the sites of which seafaring raiders?

Vikings kept their needles in small stoppered tubes because early needles were precious and easily lost. Similar cases turn up worldwide, from cane ones in Peru to ivory ones made by Inuit.

Which machine stitch, sewn over the stitches just made at each end of a seam, stops it coming undone?

Backstitch on a machine means sewing in reverse over stitches just made, which keeps the seam from coming undone. Most domestic machines are able to do it.

Which sewing machine part pulls slack thread back up after each stitch and causes jams if it is threaded wrongly?

Take-up lever movement draws back the extra thread that was pulled down to loop around the lower thread. It also helps keep the upper thread at the proper tightness.

Which metal part of a sewing machine, named after part of the body, has openings for the needle to pass through?

The throat plate, also called the needle plate, covers the bed of the machine beneath the needle. Lint collects under it, so it is among the first parts taken off for cleaning.

Which pair of sewing machine parts squeezes the upper thread as it passes, to control how tightly it runs?

Tension discs set the pull on the upper thread so that it balances the lower one. When stitches look saggy or too tight, a tension problem is the most likely cause.

Early lockstitch machines passed the lower thread through each loop inside which boat-shaped or bullet-shaped carrier?

Shuttle designs began boat-shaped and open-sided, and long, slender bullet versions took over in the 1880s. Oscillating ones are still among the most common drive designs today.

The golden coating that makes some sewing machine needles last far longer is a compound of nitrogen and which metal?

Titanium nitride is a hard golden ceramic that cuts down abrasion, but it adds no stiffness. A coated needle will bend just as easily as a plain one.

On a sewing machine needle, which garment-like name is given to the notch that lets the hook pass close by?

The scarf gives the hook extra room to sweep past the needle and catch the thread. A separate groove lets the thread lie close to the needle as it passes through the cloth.

In thimblerig, an old street swindle, which small object is hidden under one of three sewing thimbles?

A pea, or a small ball, is slid from thimble to thimble faster than the eye can follow. The word thimblerig dates from the 1820s, and to rig still means to fix a result dishonestly.

Which creature in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland takes Alice's own thimble and awards it back to her as a prize?

The Dodo has just organised the Caucus race, in which everyone wins and Alice hands out sweets as prizes. With nothing left for herself, she is presented with her own thimble.

Charles Horner's Dorcas thimbles hid a core of which strong metal between layers of silver?

Steel stopped needles punching through, which was the trouble with soft all-silver thimbles. Horner, a Halifax jeweller, patented the sandwich and Dorcas thimbles are now sought by collectors.

People who collect thimbles, a hobby that took off after London's Great Exhibition, are known by which name?

Digitabulists got their start when firms issued souvenir thimbles for the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. Prized pieces today include Meissen porcelain and whalebone scrimshaw examples.

During the First World War, silver thimbles given by the British public were melted down to pay for what?

Hospital equipment bought by the Silver Thimble Fund included 15 ambulances and five motor hospital launches. Some 60,000 thimbles had been handed in by 1919.

The word thimble grew out of the Old English name for which part of the hand?

Thumb is the root, since the Old English word meant a sheath or covering for it. The letter b only crept into thimble in the 15th century.

Which German city, renowned for its brass-working, became an early centre of thimble making in the 15th century?

Nuremberg led the trade until thimble making shifted to Holland in the 17th century. Most metal thimbles of the period were brass, either cast or hammered from sheet.

Hand sewers coat thread with which natural substance, also used for candles, to strengthen and preserve it?

Beeswax has long been rubbed into sewing thread, cord and even shoelaces to make them last. Bow makers and the painters of ancient mummy portraits relied on it too.

Milliners needles, long and handy for basting, are named after the trade of making which item?

Hats and other headwear are the business of a milliner. The trade's needles are longer than general-purpose ones, which also makes them useful for pleating.

The small strawberry attached to many pincushions is filled with which abrasive powder to clean and sharpen pins?

Emery is a dark, granular rock made largely of corundum, and pushing a pin through it scours off rust. Turkey and Greece supply most of the world's stock.

Which long, thick needle with a ballpoint tip and a large eye is used to thread elastic through a casing?

Bodkin eyes are long enough to take ribbon and cord as well as elastic, a job otherwise done with a safety pin. In the 18th century they were prized enough to have cases of their own.

Unlike most hand needles, a tapestry needle has which kind of tip to pass through canvas without catching threads?

Blunt tips slide through the gaps in loosely woven cloth instead of splitting its threads. The tip is usually bent at a slight angle, and the needle's big eye carries heavy yarn.

Which pointed tool makes eyelet holes in fabric by pushing the threads apart instead of cutting them?

An awl parts the threads instead of severing them. Bone ones found at Blombos Cave in South Africa date back more than 70,000 years.

The profile stamped on classic needle threaders might show Minerva or which weaver, turned into a spider in Greek myth?

Arachne and Minerva met in a weaving contest, so either would suit a gadget for threading needles. The little tin handle simply shows a woman's head, and nobody is sure whose.

Glovers needles, made for stitching leather, have a point of which shape so that they pierce without tearing?

Triangular points let the needle pierce leather cleanly, and they work on vinyl and plastic too. Sailmakers use a similar needle whose three-sided point runs further up the shaft.

Which English town once produced about 90% of the world's needles, a trade now remembered at its Forge Mill?

Redditch, in Worcestershire, was turning out around 3.5 billion needles a year at its peak in the 1870s. Forge Mill, an old scouring mill, was reopened to visitors by Queen Elizabeth II in 1983.

Which name is given to the medium-length, round-eyed needles used for general hand sewing?

Sharps are the everyday needle, with a keen point and a small round eye. Some have a double eye, to carry two strands of thread at once.

Which part of a sewing machine needle, the thick end furthest from the point, is clamped into the needle holder?

The shank is the thick upper end, and it tapers at the shoulder into the slimmer shaft. Domestic machines use one common needle type, so a universal needle fits most of them.