Everyday is Sewing Machine Day

Yes, On the condition you buy me a Domestic sewing machine!

Today is National Sewing Machine day, but in my house EVERYDAY is sewing machine day. In my specialty area of dress study, the sewing machine had become very available and very affordable, and women everywhere were using it to their advantage. When you think of the sewing machine, the name Singer immediately comes to mind. I like to joke that while Elias Howe may have invented the sewing machine as we know it, Isaac Singer invented something that got it into the everyday seamstresses hands much faster, the payment plan. 

1873 Petersons Sewing machine Advertisement

​​Elias Howe's workable invention of 1846 would not catch on until Isaac Singer would seize upon the marketing idea of buying "on time. " This meant the costly, but time saving, machine could be purchased one small payment at a time of only  $3- 5 a month in 1856.  The sales of sewing machines would triple that year from the previous year. The sewing machine would be a treasured possession for many women, but the start of the Civil War would prevent the sewing machine from becoming truly widespread until about 1870. Prices ranged from $3 for a simple chain stitch machine to $70 for most elaborate models. In 1870 Demorest offered as a premium for selling 50 subscriptions to their magazine a Grover and Baker sewing machine worth $55. In 1873 the Common Sense Family Sewing Machine priced at $15 was offered in Peterson's magazine. By the 1890's a very nice model could be purchased for $13.25

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1870 Demorest Advertisement

             Year   Number made
​1853       2,259
1857     12,713
1861     34,566
1863     49,808
1866     81,192
1870   462,317
1876    578,352

To give you an idea of how fast the sewing machine industry grew here is a table of machines licensed annually
(Because all sewing machines relied on Elias Howe's patent- sewing machine makers had to pay royalties to him, so a fairly accurate number was kept until his patent expired)

“A good hand-sewer makes an average of thirty-five stitches per minute; the fastest machines on some kinds of work perform three thousand per minute. There are in a good shirt twenty thousand six hundred and twenty stitches; what a saving to do them at machine speed!...
...As soon as lovely woman discovers that she can make ten stitches in the time one used to require, a desire seizes her to put ten times as many stitches as she formerly did."- A Lady's Friend, January 1868

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A Mid-1870's wash dress from my personal collection showing machine sewn hems that are cut on the bias and turned to the outside.
​A clever use of the sewing machine. 

Advertisements increasingly show how unhappy women were without a sewing machine, as this New Home ad with the wife demanding a New Home machine or a divorce!

As well as how happy it made a household to own a sewing machine!  -
​From a domestic advertising booklet 1880's 

 
Most machines came with an assortment of specialty feet, that don't often come with modern sewing machines. Examples are: gathering feet, ruffling feet, hemming feet (in multiple hem widths), felling feet, and tucking feet.  All for machines that only sew a straight stitch, but could be more labor saving and versatile with that straight stitch than we could imagine. ​https://archive.org/details/DirectionsForUsingTheAttachmentsForTheWheelerWilsonNo.9Family

I have found antique sewing machines very basic machines that are easy to learn to run and self repair. 
A good source for all things antique sewing machine is http://ismacs.net/
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Identify your antique singer sewing machine by going to
 http://www.sandman-collectibles.com/id-singer-machines.htm
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Images are from my personal collection all rights reserved
For more reading
The Encyclopedia of Early American Sewing Machines by Carter Bays
The Invention of the Sewing Machine by Grace Rogers Cooper
https://archive.org/details/geniusrewardedor00newyuoft
 https://archive.org/details/singerinfamily00sing_0/
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