Machine-stitched clothing - when?

['Monterrey' Jack Brass]

Mike,

Now that's good info...!

Thanks for the excellent documentation and source. I will be adding to the library.

YMH&OS,

Monterrey J. B.

[James Hunt]

Mick: That is good stuff!

[The Elderly Kid]

Wow. When I started this thread I expected someone to say something like, "April 5, 1859."
I never expected this bonanza of information, not to mention documentation. I appreciate everything and if anyone needs info about Rome during the late Republic, which is my personal realm of expertise, feel free to ask. I've written a bunch of books with that setting.

[Buffalow Red]

my singer 1951 sewing machine that i use has a medalion type medal riveted on it, that says centintal model 1851-1951.  so singer was manufacturing sewing machines in 1851

[French Jack]

Some of the handwork you refer to, Brass, was done as a result of off the shelf clothing needing to be sized to the individual.  Cuff on pants, and on coats were tailor sewn to the individual buyer, and as a consequence, done mostly by hand.  This was a common practice a hundred years later.  Today, most pants and coats are ready hemmed, in a variety of sizes.  One of the so-called benefits of off-shore labor, and the demise of the sewing industry in the USA.

[Chantilly]

Looks like you got really sound information.  You might be interested in The Femal Frontier:  A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the Plains by Glenda Riley.  This book is not about the industrialization in the cities but looks more at the women that moved westward.  There are references to sewing by machine in the 1860's in the west as well.  Just by viewing the increasing dress decoration from the early 1860's into the 1870's, you can see that machine sewing had an impact on women's clothing rather dramatically.  Most of these dresses were machine sewn with some hand work.   

"While the extravagant claims that appeard in advertisements for Singer, Raymond's, Weed's, Wheeler and Wilson's, and other sewing machines exagerated the revolution that they had brought in the domestic manufacture of clothing, such machines did relieve women of hundreds of wearying hours of handsewing.  Woman after woman remarked upon her new sewing machine and the excitement of the neighbors as they flocked  to see the marvel.  Only gradually did women learn that the more complex fashions that were made possible by the macines created almost as much work as the machines saved.  Alice Money, a young girl who did all the sewing for her family during the 1860s, treadled hundreds of miles as she produced muslim undergarments, with yards of ruffles and tucks, and calico dresses that were lined and trimmed with more ruffles, tucks and bias bindings.  Her early model of a Wheeler and Wilson sewing machine was said to have " a noise like a threshing machine and ran almost as hard." pages 59-60.

The book is well documented.

[Books OToole]

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has just published a book about early photographs/photographers which includes hundreds of deguerotyps.  One, done in the early 1850s, is of a man and a sewing machine; probably a prototype as it does not resemble any machine that was subsequently marketed.

Books

[Dr. Bob]

Howdy Books,

How much does this learned tome set ya back?

[Books OToole]

It retails for $65.00. (I got a discount.)

Books