The Development Of Sewing Machines

Producing a creative machine that would do not just your sewing but your embroidery as well was the farthest thing from people’s minds when the first extra stitches were added to sewing machines. The straight stitching was like a godsend to people who had previously spent hours sewing by hand, and now had time for other things. So the initial idea was to add just a few more simple stitches for people to use. Sewing machines with decorative stitches, along the lines of today’s elaborate embroidery and quilting machines, weren’t yet even a gleam in the designers’ eyes.

Designers eventually thought of a way to create a sewing machine with decorative stitches, and some of these extra stitches were built into newer models. And in many cases, other decorative stitching was added by the user’s choice, using a primitive form of program. A design could be punched into a paper tape using little holes, the tape then being fed into the sewing machine. Pins inside would go through the holes and this would trigger a mechanical reaction that moved the machine needle in certain ways. This method produced some creative stitching, but it was also susceptible to errors in the punching, which sometimes produced bad results on the actual cloth.

The next mechanical stage in sewing machines with decorative stitches produced much more reliable results, and opened the door for introducing many more programs that could be added externally. In this stage, hard plastic rings were created with indentations and bumps around the outer edge. These disks could be snapped into a special place on the machine, and as the ring turned, the bumps and indentations would move levers that would in turn move the needle in creative machine patterns. The errors were far fewer using this method and the designs got more elaborate.

Electronics ended up being the key to future development, as sewing machines with decorative stitches moved away from having to rely on mechanical programs that triggered mechanical movements, and came to rely instead on digital programs that triggered those same movements. Creative stitching can now be designed and produced more quickly. The sorts of things that can be created this way would completely astonish the people, all those years ago, who first conceived the idea of a machine with a few extra basic stitches.

Beth Kaminski is the co-author of Curing Your Anxiety And Panic Attacks which detailed panic attacks help as well as tips on the various medications for panic disorder available at www.anxietydisordercure.com.