About Sewing

Sewing is the art of attaching various objects using a needle and thread and stitches that can hold the materials together. It is one of the oldest arts that is involved in textile and is known to be as old as the Paleolithic era. Today we know of sewing as something that is done with thread and a needle but archaeologists believe that sewing was done in the Stone Age by using bones or ivory needles and thread out of animal parts such as gut, veins and more.

Sewing is not something that is used in making clothes or creating household items like linens. It is used in a variety of crafts like shoe-making, sail making, book binding and the creation of sports goods. But sewing is the base and foundation of a lot of textile arts like patchwork, embroidery, quilting, applique and more.

The invention of the sewing machine took place only in the 19th century. This indicates that all the sewing before that was taking place by hand. The mass production of apparel and other items that need sewing started to take place after computerization in the 29th century. Hand sewing is however, still practiced in some places and high quality fashion, hate couture and designer dresses are still a craze.

The main thing that is required in sewing is to understand the stitches and the seams. A stitch can be defined as a single loop created by the thread that involves going in the fabric and coming out. Many stitches are named based on the manner in which they are created. The most common stitches created by a machine include the chain stitch, the lock-stitch and the over-lock. The row of stitches that fasten two objects or two pieces of cloth together is called a seam.

Typically sewing can be divided into plain sewing. This involves making or mending clothes that are of household use called plain sewing. When you do decorative stitches in order to embellish a piece of cloth, it is called fancywork. Some of the techniques used in fancywork include embroidery, shirring and smocking. Heirloom stitching is the art of using a machine to create stitches that are similar to those that can be created by hand or embroidery that is done by hand.

Some of the most common stitches that are used in sewing include chain stitch, back stitch, running stitch, double running stitch, zigzag stitch, cover-stitch and a whole host of others. Some of the techniques used in sewing include basting, darning, cutting, embellishing, gather, godet, pleating, shirring, fabric tube tuning and gusset. Closures are generally achieved with the use of buckles, buttons, fly, hook and eye, shank, snap, Velcro and zipper. Professions that involve some amount of sewing include drapers, dressmakers, mercers, haberdashers ad tailors.

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