47 Fun Facts About Sewing

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

The 7 cm needle, carved from bird bone, was found in Denisova Cave in Siberia's Altai in 2016 and dated to about 50,000 years ago, making it among the oldest needles known.

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.

After Barthelemy Thimonnier patented his sewing machine in 1830, what reportedly happened to his factory?

Tailors saw the machine as a threat to their livelihoods; Thimonnier's machines were meant to make military uniforms.

Who invented the first American lockstitch sewing machine, in 1832?

Walter Hunt built his lockstitch machine in 1832 but never patented it, reportedly fearing it would throw seamstresses out of work; he did patent the safety pin in 1849.

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

Howe put the eye at the needle's point so a shuttle beneath the cloth could loop the thread; family legend traces the idea to a dream of warriors carrying spears pierced near the tip.

Besides the sewing machine, Elias Howe patented which zipper ancestor in 1851?

Howe's 1851 patent for an 'Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure' ran a series of clasps along a cord; he never marketed it, and practical slide fasteners were developed by others decades later.

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

From 1856 Clark let households buy on hire-purchase instalment plans, paying a small deposit and monthly sums for machines that cost well over $100; he also accepted trade-ins and sales soared.

Which American inventor devised the rotary hook, the bobbin drive in most modern sewing machines?

Allen B. Wilson patented the rotary hook in the early 1850s and the four-motion cloth feed in 1854; both designs were adopted almost universally and underpin the Wheeler & Wilson machines.

After the 1856 sewing-machine patent pool, what did other makers have to pay per machine?

The Sewing Machine Combination of Singer, Howe, Wheeler & Wilson and Grover & Baker charged rival makers $15 a machine, later cut to $5; it was one of the first patent pools in American industry.

A lockstitch, the stitch most home machines make, uses how many threads?

A lockstitch uses two threads: the needle thread from above interlocks with a second thread fed from the bobbin or shuttle beneath the cloth.

What is the main drawback of a chain stitch?

That is why it turns up on feed sacks, where you want to pull one thread and open the bag.

An overlock stitch, made by a serger, can be formed with how many threads?

Sergers form an overlock with two to four threads, using one or two needles and one or two loopers, trimming the seam allowance and wrapping the raw edge as they sew.

In which year did the Singer company introduce the first electric sewing machines?

Singer showed its first electric sewing machines in 1889, but household electricity was then rare, so foot-powered machines stayed common for decades.

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

The idea reportedly came from his wife's frustration that patterns were sold in only one size; within a year they had a factory on Broadway.

Which magazine did the Butterick company publish from 1873 to promote its patterns?

The Delineator began in 1873 as a Butterick pattern catalogue and grew into one of America's biggest women's magazines, with Theodore Dreiser among its editors, before closing in 1937.

Which sewing tool is worn on the finger to protect it from the needle?

A thimble caps the fingertip that pushes the needle through cloth; traditional ones are metal, dimpled on the outside to seat the needle's blunt end.

What is a collector of thimbles called?

A thimble collector is a digitabulist, from the Latin digitabulum, a finger covering; the thimble was also one of Monopoly's original metal tokens from 1935 until it was dropped in 2017.

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

Hand-needle sizes run backwards: a size 12 is shorter and finer than a size 9, the same logic as wire gauges, with sizes 1 to 12 the common range for sharps.

Which English town became the centre of the needle-making trade from the 17th century?

Redditch, in Worcestershire, dominated English needle-making from the 1600s, and by the 19th century its mills were making the great majority of the world's needles.

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

Betweens, also sold as quilting needles, are short and fine so they pass quickly through layered fabric and batting; sharps are the general-purpose needle and tapestry needles suit loose weaves.

Whitcomb Judson patented which zipper ancestor in 1893?

Judson showed his 'clasp locker', a hook-and-eye shoe fastener, at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair; Gideon Sundback later redesigned the idea into the modern zipper in 1913.

Which company coined the word 'zipper' in 1923?

B.F. Goodrich coined 'zipper' in 1923 for the fastener on its rubber galoshes; in 1937 the zipper beat the button in Esquire's 'Battle of the Fly' after French designers adopted it for men's trousers.

The oldest known button, about 5,000 years old, was found at Mohenjo-daro and is made of what?

The Mohenjo-daro button is a curved shell pierced to be sewn on as an ornament; buttons with buttonholes used as fasteners appeared first in 13th-century Germany.

On classic clothing, women's buttons sit on which side?

Women's buttons sit on the left and men's on the right; one common but unproven explanation is that wealthy women were dressed by right-handed maids facing them.

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

The name blends the French 'velours' and 'crochet'; the patent was granted in 1955.

Which two French words combine to make the name Velcro?

Velcro is a portmanteau of the French velours (velvet) and crochet (hook); NASA used the fasteners throughout the Apollo programme, on suits, sample bags and lunar rovers.

Quilting joins at least how many layers of fabric?

Quilting stitches through at least three layers: a decorative top, an insulating batting and a backing; the stitches hold the layers together and keep the padding from shifting.

Where is the Tristan quilt, the oldest surviving European bed quilt, kept?

One section of the Tristan quilt, made in Sicily around 1360-1400 and stuffed and quilted in linen, is at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; a second section is in Florence's Bargello.

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, patented by Heribert Bauer in 1885, joins a ball and socket?

The snap fastener, or press stud, was patented by German inventor Heribert Bauer in 1885; a ball on one disc presses into a spring socket on the other to hold fabric closed.

Crewelwork is decorative stitching done with what kind of yarn?

Crewelwork is decorative stitching in a fine twisted wool yarn, traditionally worked on linen twill with chain, stem, satin and seed stitches; 17th-century Jacobean crewel hangings are the classic examples.

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

The seam is first sewn wrong sides together at a quarter inch, trimmed to an eighth, pressed and sewn again.

A true flat-felled seam is most often found on which part of a garment?

Jeans makers run the inseam and yoke through a feed-off-the-arm double-needle machine to make a true flat-felled seam, which shows a pair of parallel stitching rows on the outside and stands up to hard wear.

What does the zigzag edge cut by pinking shears achieve?

The zigzag cut limits how far the fabric frays, because threads can only unravel to the nearest notch; Louise Austin patented a pinking shear 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, who opened her Paris house in 1912, built her gowns on the bias cut from the 1920s, and her clinging, fluid dresses defined 1930s evening wear.

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 Latvian-born tailor in Reno, Nevada, began riveting the stress points of work trousers around 1871 and patented the idea with his fabric supplier Levi Strauss in May 1873.

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

Henry Poole & Co, the founding tailor of Savile Row, cut a short smoking jacket for the Prince of Wales in 1865 that became the dinner jacket; the Beatles later 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?

Each episode runs the Pattern Challenge, the Transformation Challenge, in which contestants remake existing garments, and the Made-to-Measure Challenge.

Project Runway premiered in December 2004 on which network?

Project Runway launched on Bravo on 1 December 2004, moved to Lifetime in 2009 and returned to Bravo in 2019; Heidi Klum hosted until 2017 with Tim Gunn as mentor.

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

A couture design may be drafted and refitted dozens of times, taking around 40 hours to reach a final pattern.

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

A velvet board does a similar specialist job, letting velvet be ironed without crushing its pile.

Which sewing technique let traditional Japanese garments be taken apart for laundering?

Kimono were hand-sewn with long running stitches that could be unpicked quickly, so the garment was taken apart, washed flat and resewn; the tight machine lockstitch 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.