How The Sewing Machine Part Changed History

Sewing has been around for thousands of years in one form or another. Throughout the last millennium, the greatest technological advancements to the sewing machine has been the types of materials that are used to make sewing needles as well as threads.

It was not until the nineteenth century, that a working sewing machine was created. To no ones big surprise, it caused an uproar. Unfortunately, in a less than positive way.

The Discovery

Sewing by hand is almost intuitive. Two separate pieces of cloth, a thread and a needle, the relationship between them is obvious. The movement comes quite naturally of the needle through the cloth and then back again is completed automatically.

The difficulty is that the basic movement that is so easy for a person doing it by hand is impossible for the same movement attempted by a machine. It has the ability to force the threaded needle down through the cloth yet it cannot let go of it up again on the other side of the cloth and push it back through the other side.

The initial patent that was filed for a sewing machine part that had the ability to replicate that movement was filed in the year 1755 and others soon followed yet no functioning machine was developed until the year 1830.

The first fully functioning machine with various sewing machine parts was created by Bathelemy Thimonnier, who was a French tailor. The sewing machine part utilized a hooked needle as well as a single thread to make a chain stitch. The fear of ending up obsolete overwhelmed a mob of other French tailors in the country who ended up burning down Thimonniers factory.

How It Works

The sewing machine part that makes a chain stitch can be found below the fabric. A needle thread near it's point pushes down through the material and the unique hooked end catches the thread and then pulls it up into a loop prior to it letting go.

After that the next stitch places more thread within the loop and the hooked piece pulls the initial stitch tightly which makes the next loop. While such a device saves people a lot of work, it can just create a straight seam that can be pulled loose if any part of thread breaks.

The sewing machine part which adds to the functionality of the home machine is the bobbin which puts in a second thread and then attaches to the first. This has the effect of making a lock stitch, which, as the name suggests, is many time more secure.

Even though this kind of sewing machine part is the discovery that actually made sewing by machine possible, each subsequent sewing machine part made its mark in history. Newer sewing machine additions include parts that make the fabric move forward, make zig-zag stitch, control the length of the stitch and so on have resulted in extraordinary advances in modern sewing.